Wing Dam, Anderson Center Sculpture Garden, Anderson Center for the Arts, Red Wing, MN. 2021. Native Dolomite Limestone, cement base, rebar, threaded steel rod. 5.5 ft. x 9 ft. x 32 ft. Site appx. 40 ft. wide x 100 ft. long. Overall stone weight appx 20 tons.
Special thank you to writer/actress Sheila Regan for her thoughtful write-up of my prototype show, Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Bed, now open in the Kaddatz Building, Fergus Falls, MN. Brief quote and link below.
“The beds are all about healing and cultivation of bodies and the patients getting better,” Driessen says. “This was a site where they could be in the hospital, but look outside these large windows. That was part of the architecture of the Kirkbride hospital system,” he says. “There was this emphasis on the connection with nature, and connecting patients to the great outdoors as much as possible. I really wanted to combine that cross-hatching between the two different types of beds, the garden bed and the hospital bed, and how both are used for nurturing, cultivation, and healing.”
Read the full article: Minnesota Artist Pete Driessen’s Healing art is inspired by shuttered Fergus Falls mental hospital. In Artstcape, Arts & Culture, MinnPost. March 14, 2023.
Recent Posts
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Please join us for a participatory Market Exchange, where we will be freely sharing with the community a limited amount of dried flowers in sixteen French galvanized buckets & two watering cans, …
Special thank you to writer/actress Sheila Regan for her thoughtful write-up of my prototype show, Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Bed, now open in the Kaddatz Building, Fergus Falls, MN…
A goal of the wildflower garden bed public art project is to offer an open-ended idea for a collaborative rural city project where citizens can cooperatively share skill sets to generate healthy ecological stewardship together…
This past January, I received an MSAB Creative Support for Individuals grant to investigate and create a potential community Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Bed via my past research at the historic Kirkbride Building, former MN State Hospital, in Fergus Falls, MN.
Here is a brief artistic statement on my recent site-specific Wing Dam sculpture that was researched, developed, designed, and created over a period of a year in conjunction with my 2020 artist residency at the lovely Anderson Center for the Arts, Red Wing, Minnesota…