ARTISTS USE PRIN GROUNDS
AS A CANVAS

Tyler Wingert (left) and Gabriel Hudson (right)
Photo by Gabriel Johnston

Four circles of seed pods within a triangle of pine needles the size of a bedroom next to Davis; car-size circles of yellow Ginkgo leaves on the green grass in front of the Pub; pine cones strewn on the Davis lawn in a Milky Way galaxy-shaped swath.

It’s not nature’s coincidental design cropping up around campus to surprise the unsuspecting observer – it’s earthwork art installations by two artists from the Principia community.

If you don’t look straight at the earthwork art, it blends into the ground around it. But if you do, you’ll see it suddenly pop.

Gabriel Hudson, a former Principia English major, and Tyler Wingert, a junior studying religion, have created four major earthwork art installments on campus during the past school year. Using only the natural materials they’ve found around campus, they “paint” with rakes, shovels and hands using the land as their canvas.  The prupose of their art, says Wingert, is to “make people stop for a second and think about something other than just the daily routine.”

In November last year, when a 30-foot spiral pine cone creation by Hudson and Wingert appeared overnight on the lawn near Davis, it impressed everyone. In the center, there was a 4-foot-wide mound of pine needles. The artists had collected the cones and needles between Davis and Morey around midnight, when both were off work and out of class.

Zoë Mahler, striding by at the time with her Mass Communications class, says she laughed at the ethereal spiral that looked like it might have been left “by aliens with artistic flair.” She added that professor Paul Wesman “was so impressed” that he detoured his entire class on their way to Davis from the School of Government to look at it.

The first earthwork installment in, early November, was a series of concentric circles forty-foot at their widest, which looked like a natural bullseye on the lawn near the Piasa Pub made with Ginkgo leaves picked up near Cox Auditorium

The third and fourth installations appeared in April. One was an 6-inch-wide line of sweet gum tree seed pods extending from the library to the Science Center. They dubbed it “Interruption,” because it separated the west side of campus from the east. The most recent project – which at publication time had not been disturbed by man or nature – was a series of triangles inside one another made with dirt and pine needle lines, seed pods, and sticks between Davis and the Science Center.

Hudson and Wingert say they use the natural materials around campus because of their wide and easy availability.

They’ve been inspired by earthwork art from renowned artists in the field. One of their biggest influences is Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist known for site-specific art.

“Over the past few years I’ve always seen the Ginkgo leaves, which are what I used for these two projects, primarily,” says Wingert. “I just knew that they had potential because they’re so bright and vibrant.”

Hudson, Wingert’s brother-in-law, explains how he got lured into earthwork: “I was sitting on the Pub patio writing up some papers for the Maple Tree and then Tyler comes by; and it’s late afternoon, around 4. And he says, ‘Hey, I have this idea of taking Ginkgo leaves, because I just love the color, and spreading them on the Chapel Green.’ ”

Hudson says some of his inspiration came from Goldsworthy’s art, like his first installment that included Ginkgo leaves at the base of a tree to make it look like the tree was “glowing from the earth.” As artists, Hudson and Wingert strive to have uniqueness in their art, though their first installment had a look reminiscent of one of Goldsworthy’s famous projects.

“I’ve been taking art classes for a few years in college off and on,” says Wingert. “[Goldsworthy] does earthworks, and I remember watching his videos and just thinking they look amazing and they’re super cool. I really like the short-term nature of them, how they kind of gradually just vanish with the wind and other elements.”

“On the one hand, we just wanted to have fun,” says Hudson. “But as soon as we started engaging with the process, all these ideas about how does man shape nature, in what way does man have a partnership with nature, and are we fine with the things man creates are ephemeral, whereas the things nature creates are perennial?” 

These ideas about man’s connection with nature came into clarity for Hudson and Wingert while creating their projects. There are always many ideas they must sift through. Hudson and Wingert say they have realized the importance of discussing their ideas on projects to help them come to a consensus about how to move forward and ultimately make something beautiful that the campus can enjoy.

Since picking sites is one important discussion they have to have, Wingert explained how they did it. “The two sites I picked so far have just been places that I thought would catch people's attention,” says Wingert. “I wanted to … kind of wake you up or make you happier to have this.”

After an earthwork has been installed and is available for the campus to see for a while, cleanup is the natural next question, says Hudson. “I think every artist in one way needs to take responsibility for the impact that their work makes; and so, if we were told to clean it up, we would clean it up. Then, on the other hand, if no one said anything, then it would just be there for however long it took until the leaves went away and, in our case, the leaf-blowers came.”

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