Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Garden Bed

The Migratory Wing/Prairie Wildflower Bed is an in-process, public art prototype project based in visual, cultural, and historical research at the historic Kirkbride Building, former MN State Hospital, in Fergus Falls, MN. The interdisciplinary project combines the rectilinear forms of vintage hospital beds with traditional garden beds to develop and generate a prospective community native prairie wildflower garden mirroring the flight patterns of the many pollinators and wetland waterfowl species that travel through the western Minnesota prairie lakes regions.

With a simple series of staggered garden plots that reflect the V-shaped avian migration patterns, the historic metal hospital beds used by former government institutions, along with the monumental Kirkbride architecture, the scalable garden beds would house native prairie wildflowers and deep-rooted prairie grasses that once nurtured and cultivated the past state hospital ecosystem. Communities can self-implement and co-strategize their individual or collective bed sites, seed broadcast and plant cultivation, and volunteer garden maintenance.

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. The creative objective initiates and reflects upon notions of healing and caretaking humans, nurturing and growing a diversity of native plant life, cultivating civic and cultural pride, and creating a sustainable prairie wetland ecosystem for all species and communities to coexist, thrive, and flourish.

For the exhibition in the Community Room at the Kaddatz Building, the artist presents an installation of two government issued hospital-style metal twin beds, with market-style dried prairie wildflowers in galvanized French vases, along with framed historical photo reference and presentation drawings within the alternative communal space. With two participatory market-style community exchanges, the artist mutually shared the dried floral vases, diverse native prairie wildflower and grass seed mixtures, framed historical photos, and installation materials with the public, including gifting the two metal beds to a local woman’s crisis shelter. The mutual exchange of the prairie seeds, vintage beds, and exhibit elements serves as continuous healing, nurturing, and cultivation within the prairie habitat and public ecosystems.