Smoke and Chaff at the Octagon Center for the Arts

Beginning Monday, November 9 and up until the Holiday break, artwork will be on display in the Main Street Cultural District of Downtown Ames. The show will include work from the Smoke and Chaff, Wild Iowa, Restless Tenants, and the Heirlooms series.

I’ve been working on more artwork focusing on wild creatures and pondering their space in our world in relation to our cultural experience. In our capitalist culture which values economics and the free flow of money, how do we value things that aren’t easy to put a price tag on, like the experience of hearing coyotes howl at night, a clear, dark sky for stargazing, and spaces to hike? How do we measure and value relationships with wild creatures such as groundhogs that may destroy property and gardens, but also create habitats for many other animals, expanding biodiversity? (Also, groundhogs are pretty cute!)

There is an idea that animals are “innocent pure souls,” that they have symbolic or even spiritual powers over us. Maybe there is some truth there. Each creature has an energy, a value, and a personality all their own. We can learn about ourselves, and even learn how to work together better, by observing, watching, and listening to animals. But anyone who has lost their chickens to a possum or fox, or worried over their livestock as a coyote runs through the yard, knows that nature is vicious. Eat or be eaten. The bigger, the faster, the better.

In contrast to the ways of wild animals, we have domesticated ourselves. We have sacrificed strength and combat for greater shared values - we value working together, friendship, and fair trade. We imprison those who steal and murder. We litigate, we negotiate, we create government. Our code of conduct is not that of the wild world.

Yet, the song of the coyote gives chills and sparks the imagination. The hoot of an owl gives depth to the dark woods. Mysterious footprints in soft dirt of the yard remind us that we are not alone on our planet. Our “dominion over the earth” is a command, a responsibility. Animal lives depend on us to conserve, to contain and manage pollution, and to leave wild spaces for them and for us. We are indeed in the age of the Anthropocene - the human centered planet. May we not loose our history, our heritage, and our wild neighbors, who are unbounded and free.

Recent Press for Iowa State Park Sticker Project

The Iowa Park Sticker Project has received recent coverage in a variety of news outlets, attesting to the popularity of Iowa’s parks and public lands this year with the pandemic. Support for the project continues to grow, it’s a challenge to keep designs in stock some days! I am still designing new parks and ordering designs to stock the sticker shop on Etsy.

Landing in the Ames Tribune lead to a sticker frenzy, which was amplified by the story getting quickly picked up in the Des Moines Register (the special publication, Iowa Life) and the regional magazine Facets. Ronna Faaborg did an excellent job summarizing the project. It made me excited to make more stickers!

Watch the KCCI CHANNEL 8 News clip.

Producer Adam Brower came all the way to my house (under construction!) to do a quick interview about the stickers. It was a fun experience, if a little overwhelming, to be “in the spotlight!” But I was excited to get the chance to share the story with the community.

Suggestions and personal stories from your visits to Iowa parks are always welcome, share your experiences in the comments! I don’t intend to stop this project anytime soon.

Black Hawk State Park

Did you know the cottonwood is sacred to the Lakota people? If you’re anything like me, that’s a bit of a surprise. Cottonwoods are famed as softwood, messy, weedy trees. They drop sap and fluff on everything. They grow very tall very fast, and then drop branches during storms, requiring constant maintenance in an urban setting.

I pondered this as I wandered with my family through Black Hawk State park, visiting “cottonwood point” and driving through a hall of hundred foot high cottonwoods. It struck me that these trees may be messy, but they are also majestic. Their leaves shine in the sun and turn on their stems, glittering in the slightest breeze. Their fast growth allows for quick shade and a quick windbreak - important on the exposed prairie. Their windfall branches are always available for a fire. Softwoods dry quickly and burn easily. I realized that there was more to this tree than what my mind, trained for neatness and order, originally thought.

I thought about this as we explored Black Hawk State Park, and I wondered what the area may have looked like when Black Hawk was chief of the Sauk tribe, and what their life was life as they were pushed west to this area, and eventually further. The lake is the southernmost glacial lake in Iowa. That means it was created as a large piece of ice fell from the Des Moines Lobe, the name of the glacier that pushed south over a third of Iowa, leaving it full of poorly drained depressions and large amounts of fertile soil. This was the land that Black Hawk and his people earned a living from, and still supports the current people of Iowa.

When I visited Black Hawk State Park, the lake was murky, full of farming sediment, runoff, and nitrates. The swimming areas were closed. I couldn’t imagine eating any fish that came out of this shallow lake, but I saw many fishing. The park used to house a hatchery which is now abandoned, an interesting experiment in the wild taking over again after the land being developed. There were many trails to explore. The atmosphere was quiet and peaceful.

I could imagine camping here, cooking over a fire, and enjoying a placid lake view. A retreat to live for a weekend in a way that people in past centuries always lived: overshadowed by huge cottonwoods that provided shade, shelter, fuel, and beauty, surrounded by birdsong.

Pine Lake State Park

Pine Lake State Park is the center of many fond memories for those in Central Iowa. If you went to camp, it very well might have been at Pine Lake. And if you live near Eldora, you attended all kinds of gatherings there, from birthdays to weeknight grill parties to routine walks with a good friend. I didn’t grow up there, but it’s easy to tell how much this park is loved by the community. The North side of the park has a lovely paved bike trail where I encountered families biking, walkers, and even grandmothers enjoying the sunshine and wildlife.

The south side of the lake is wilder, and the WPA history shines brightest here. The trail winds up and down the draw, between 250 year old pines, and over bridges. A speckled fawn and I stumbled into each other, each of us mesmerized by the other until the Doe broke the moment and the two deer dashed away. The trail was less traveled but fascinating at every turn.

The Island on Pine Lake no longer has an abundance of old white pines. It does have eagles perched on the bare trunks. Watch them watch you.

The namesake of the park is an old stand of White Pine - the furthest south you will find in Iowa. Unfortunately many were destroyed by a bad hailstorm in 2009. While hiking, I spotted many new white pine saplings making their way through the undergrowth and protected by deer fencing.

The lake was quiet, peppered with fishing boats. The atmosphere was relaxed. Pine lake is a local treasure, set up to create another generation of memories.

Earth Eyes

Sometimes, a name feels right. “She does look like a Margaret.” Sometimes they feel wrong. “I always thought he looked like a Derek. I can never remember his name.” Names are tricky. They are hard to find.

To me, “Prairie Pothole,” the name for a shallow wetland characteristic of north central Iowa, has never felt right. “Kettlehole” gets a little closer but feels simplistic. “Wetland” is correct in a scientific, summing up kind of way, but doesn’t sum up what they really are. How they feel.

Sketchbook entry for our visit to Doolittle Prairie, a rare wet prairie remnant. The center to bottom right is a birds-eye map view, surrounded by small sketches of the views there.

I pondered this as my two year old embarked on a blustery but sunny Wednesday in early March to “get out of the house.” Doolittle is near my home and we visit often. I was feeling as restless as the wind.

We tromped through the tall dried grasses and appreciated shelter offered from an eastern red cedar, recently cut down by Story County Conservation to prevent the aggressive tree from taking over the grassland. We forged through a stand of dogwoods, a miniature forest. There was much squealing and stomping about in it. On the other side, we reached a large depression filled with water, a pothole. It was surrounded by cattails and recently mowed woody shrubs which also threatened to take over the grassland.

We dipped our Wellingtons in the cold water, pondered the sticks and reeds submerged, and threw a few more in for good measure. The wind sculpted diamond patterns on the liquid surface. It threatened to push us in on the especially strong gusts. A red-winged blackbird scolded us for invading his territory. Clouds, a little tattered, wheeled by overhead, their rough outlines mimicking the irregular depression in the earth filled with water as blue as the sky.

Pothole on the Doolittle Prairie

Last summer I had the opportunity to fly with a pilot friend who took me over our place, and also over this prairie patch. The flight confirmed the many “little drinks” (as French explorers called them) that usually go unnoticed these days, having been drained and farmed for a hundred or more years. From the air, the ghosts of their borders were easily seen. They are everywhere. It reminded me that the name “pothole” probably wasn’t negative enough for the early white settlers, who found themselves regularly chest deep in “sloughs” when they attempted any direct route across the open land.

These travel struggles are hard to imagine for us today, who can drive in three hours what took at least two weeks of hard trudging before the gridded road system, carrying all supplies needed and camping every night. It explains why so many potholes are gone. They were not only seen as “unhealthful,” but caused physical discomfort, stole boots, ruined supplies, and most of all, they were impossible to farm. The wet prairie land didn’t yield easily to European farming methods.

Yet, as Abbie Gardner wrote in her account of the Spirit Lake Massacre in 1856, this ecosystem provided a wild beauty. Her family traveled across the pothole region by wagon, fording little streams, mucking through potholes, and making a path through the tall grass.

“The far stretching prairie, clothed in its mantle of green luxuriant grass, and studded here and there with the golden stars of the resin-weed [compass plant or possibly a wild sunflower], and a thousand flowering plants of a humbler growth but no less brilliant hues, presented to the eye a scene of enchanting beauty, beside which the things of man’s devising fade like stars before the morning sun. Nor were prairies the only attraction. Here and there a babbling brook and sparkling river came together, eager to join hands and be away to the sea; and along their banks were shady groves of maple, oak, and elm, festooned with wild grape, woodbine, bitter-sweet, and ivy, in more fantastic forms and prodigality. Herds of elk and deer, in all the grace of their native freedom, fed on the nutritious grasses and sought shelter in groves. Every variety of wild fowl — in flocks no man could number — filled the air and nested on the ground. In fact, every spot teemed with life and beauty. All this filled our hearts with that peaceful joy which nature gives.”

Perhaps we are striking out again into unknown territory. With the arrival of Covid 19 across the world, our carefully constructed networks of man-made places of relaxation and fellowship are off limits. We have come to a junction where the pull and wildness of nature seems a welcome respite.

A Kettlehole at Mc Farland Park on March 24, filled with the singing of the spring peepers, drinking in a clear sky.

My family walked around another nearby park last night in a desperate escape from our predictable, comfortable shelter-in-place home. We encountered more families there on a chilly Tuesday evening than ever before (all maintaining a careful 6 foot buffer). We felt a strange unity with them - we were all there fighting the same unseen demons. As we left, we walked the prairie trail back to the parking lot. The pothole was alive with spring peepers and calm with the breeze having died down for the night. It was bigger than usual, recently filled by a day of rain. The glassy surface suddenly reminded me of an eye gazing upward at the clear sky. It drank it in.

I mourned for the loss of this wild and eloquent landscape. Of what I can’t name.

Iowa Parks Sticker Project: Fossil and Prairie Park

Hidden in plain sight near rural Rockford Iowa (in western Floyd County near Mason City) lies a glimpse into Iowa’s ancient past. In October 2019, I took a trip there to explore a park that promised a unique time travel experience (powered by a little imagination and some science!). I was not disappointed!

This defunct clay mine is filled with fossils that you are free to hunt and take home (but not to sell!). Even my toddler found handfulls of “sheshels” all by himself on clay and fossil rich slopes like these. The bedrock here contains fossils made during the Devonian era, about 375 million years ago, when Iowa was a warm inland sea near the equator.

Those of us who grew up among carpets of corn and beans of course have a hard time imagining what a warm ancient sea might look like here. I spent a lovely evening on The Google looking up and drawing the living versions of the rocks we found. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of the ocean and the beauty of coral reefs. Little did I know I was living above an ancient sea with corals, ancient fishes, and many kinds of shells. You can read all about it and find fossil examples and illustrations at the park’s visitors center.

Another interesting glimpse into Iowa’s recent past can be seen in the old brick kilns that were connected to the clay mine that excavated the fossil gorge in the late 1800s. Rockford Brick and Tile Co. once stood here, but it’s post-industrial scar still remains. Signs along the trail explain the mining process and a little about the company. Well after the company closed, local enthusiasts who knew what treasure trove of fossils were uncovered worked to save the land from development and turn it into a county park.

One of the beehive brick kilns at Fossil and Prairie Park that was part of Rockford Brick & Tile Co.

Hikers will appreciate the miles of diverse prairie trails available at the park, including remnant prairie. The route is well-marked and carefully groomed with interesting and informative signage. Hike all the way to nearby Rockford along the old railbed trail that served the Rockford Brick and Tile Co. You will also find canoe access to the Winnebego River in the park.

Access to the fossil gorge is easier if you hike around the gorge along the prairie towards the brick kilns. There are no stairs or handrails, so wear sturdy shoes and proceed carefully. Fossils are especially abundant after a rainstorm, but the the clay mud at the bottom is sticky - watch where you go and don’t step in wet puddles. Read the informative signs above the gorge and go try to find your own treasures!

Fossil and Prairie Sticker available in the visitors center at the park and in this shop.

Lakeside Lab Residency: June 16-30, 2019

I was accepted as one of six artists to participate as an Artist in Residence at Iowa Lakeside Laboratory in Milford, Iowa. An Artist in Residence brings their creative skills to the classroom, and in this case, the classroom is outdoors.

These studies are made with images taken through the microscope of various algae life. The background uses photographs of pond weeds near where water samples containing these microscopic lives were were taken.

Ichthyology student Colton holds the seine to catch fish washing downstream.

I traveled with the Ichthyology class to do sampling of streams and rivers in Northeast and Southeast Iowa, learned about algae sampling and diatom counting, learned about Iowa’s water systems and their overall health, and heard a lot of information about historic and contemporary native peoples in Iowa through the Archaeology class.

I came away with hundreds of photos, many sketches, and a lot of learning. This will continue to inform my work in the future.

Read my photo journal about my experiences and journals of other Artists and Residence on the Lakeside Lab Website.

Smoke and Chaff at Westmont College, California

The series Smoke and Chaff investigates absence. The Midwest, Iowa in particular, is one of the most modified landscapes on earth, with less than one percent of native prairie and forest land remaining. The decimation of diversity in the ecological environment speaks to our desire to make the world match our own vision of success, taming the seeming chaos of God’s created order.  The more we learn about native landscapes, the more amazing they are.

Artwork is on display from February 21 - March 1. A workshop takes place on February 22 from 12:45 - 2:15 in the printmaking studio.

"Heirlooms" at Pearson Lakes Art Center, Okoboji, Iowa

Opening: January 10, 2018 from 5-7 P.M, artist talk at 6:00
Where: Weaver Lobby Gallery and McIlrath Landing Gallery

Heirlooms are up on display at the Pearson Lakes Art Center in Okoboji, Iowa until March 9, 2019. The work is a collection of both rare Midwestern wild animals and domesticated rare breeds of livestock and poultry. The Heirlooms series celebrates the relationship of co-dependence we share with livestock animals. Wild animals enrich our living, surprising us with their unconventional ways and beauty.

The show aims to remind us of the special thing that we are entrusted to preserve and protect: the gift of life, in all its many forms.

For more on the exhibit, visit: https://www.lakesart.org/visual-arts/naomi-friend-heirlooms

See a video tour of the exhibit on Facebook

Read about the show in the Northwest Iowa Review

Heritage Breed Paintings on display at Iowa Central Community College

Show Dates: October 5 - November 1 2018

Location: Decker Auditorium, Atrium. Triton Cir, Fort Dodge, IA 50501

Reception October 17, 2018, 5-7 P.M. Art demonstration proceeding in classrooms. Details to follow.

Red Angus Cows wins first place award for State Agriculture Art Exhibition

Agriculture Art Exhibition
Aug. 1-Oct. 31, 2018
Monday-Saturday, 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Cafe Baratta's, State Historical Museum of Iowa

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Farm Bureau Federation partner with the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs to celebrate works of art that capture the beauty and diversity of Iowa’s rural landscapes and agriculture.

The 2018 “Celebration of Iowa: Agriculture Art Exhibition” showcases 10 artists in adult and youth divisions who will be awarded cash prizes. The winning entries will be on display Aug. 1 through Oct. 31 at Café Baratta’s at the State Historical Museum of Iowa. Final awards to be announced August 28, 2018. 

Artists Statement:

Red Angus Cows is made with a combination of photography and painting techniques. Cyanotype chemistry, an antique photo process, is hand-painted onto fabric and exposed with negatives that I create using photographs of Iowa themes. After the exposure developed, I stretch it onto canvas stretchers and do a painting on the surface. This piece is inspired by the challenges farmers face in continuing their work in a changing culture and environment. The exposure includes glimpses of the past - grain silos, prairie, and historic breeds of cattle and more. Prairie springs from deep Iowa soil, while images of flooded fields and an Iowa watershed map reference agriculture’s modern challenges. The painting of the Red Angus Cows celebrates the role of farmers and their partnership with their livestock. Iowa farmers today continue their work of breed specialization through new farming technologies and biology tools. The food solutions of the future will be based on the hard work of the past.

https://iowaculture.gov/arts

Ames Tribune: http://www.amestrib.com/news/20180829/story-city-woman-wins-top-honor-at-celebration-of-iowa-agriculture-art-exhibit

Thanks to our panel of judges - President Craig Hill of the Iowa Farm Bureau, Secretary Mike Naig of theIowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, and Director Chris Kramer of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. — with Mike Naig for Iowa Agriculture, Iowa Farm Bureau, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardshipand Iowa Culture at State Historical Museum of Iowa.

Art Walk, Main Street Ames 2018

On the first Friday of June every year, Main Street Ames hosts Art Walk. Area artists set up shop in downtown businesses and demonstrate and explain their artwork. Naomi had a great turnout at the Octagon Gallery Shop. She exposed and developed cyanotypes, explaining the art process from start to finished work. 

Exhibit at Iowa Law Library through August 2017

A selection of the body of work "Restless Tenants" will be displayed at the the Iowa Law Library in Des Moines, Iowa, from May - August, 2017. The Law Library is located in the State Capitol and is visited by thousands of people each year.

Read the summary from the Iowa Arts Council here.

"Restless Tenants" in this context is a representation of the inherent challenges and benefits of the urban and rural landscape of Iowa. The Law Library is a reflection of the values that result from that dichotomy through the lens of the law. 

Energy Source, Cyanotype and Tea, 2014 10x10". 

Artwork receives Honorable Mention at Octagon exhibit

The piece Florida Cracker Cow received an honorable mention award in the Clay, Fiber, Paper, Glass, Metal, Wood exhibit which was on display at the Octagon Center for the Arts from January 27 - April 1, 2017. The exhibit was juried by Santiago Cal, internationally exhibited professor of Sculpture at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. 

Florida Cracker Cow, 2016, Cyanotype, Acrylic, and Spraypaint. 18x24"

Find Naomi's Cyanotypes at the Des Moines Art Festival, June 2017

The series Heirlooms will be featured at the Des Moines Art Festival in downtown Des Moines, 2017. The festival runs from June 23-25 in western gateway park. 180 of the best artists across the country will be featured, only 12 were accepted from Iowa. 

View Naomi, and the other participating artists on the festival website here.

Belgian Hare Rabbit, 18x18"

Public Art at Dordt College

The installation Boundless Horizons was installed in October of 2016, and will be on permanent display at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa in the new Science building construction. Find it on the ground floor outside of the administrative offices. 

The piece celebrates and studies the many avenues of discovery made available in God's created world through the study of science and technology, the created order of the universe. 

New show, "Heirlooms" at Iowa Central Community College

October 1-31

New work will be featured at Iowa Central Community College featuring Heirlooms. Images of traditional "heirlooms" are juxtaposed in contemporary landscapes. The work raises questions about issues such as commercial genetic manipulation and a culture that values high production over husbandry. 

Artwork now at Cafe Diem, Ames, Iowa

New work on display starting July. Stop by and see it!