On September 11th, the School of Art students, in collaboration with the Office for Sustainability, took a field trip to the Oak Knoll remnant prairie behind the Cato Springs Research Center. The art students rode spin e-bikes to the location and spent several hours drawing and learning about the landscape and ecosystem.
This field trip was part of a larger project conducted by the Prairie Pedagogy Research Group, an interdisciplinary group of artists, educators, scientists, and sustainability professionals interested in learning from, creating with, preserving, and restoring the Oak Knoll remnant prairie while building long-term relationships with the prairie as an extended, educational studio.
According to Jean Schmitt, “the work Caite Ramos and their students initiated connects artists to specific prairie plant species. These same plans have become the basis for art and design projects in two other courses: Dr. Maribeth Latvis’ Introduction to Biology course and Jean Schmitt’s Image and Design Foundations course. This work will be exhibited alongside Prairie Pedagogy coursework from Aaron Turner’s Large-Scale Photography course.”
The Oak Knoll remnant prairie has been an important concern for the Office for Sustainability because of biodiversity. Remnant prairies are very rare, and they continue to dwindle in Arkansas, harming the ecological functioning of native species. Caite Ramos provides further insight into their importance, “the Prairie is an often overlooked landscape teeming with biodiversity and innumerable relationships amongst and across species. Here in NWA we’re living on or near what used to be thousands of acres of prairie and savannah before it was developed, converted to farmlands or grazing pastures. By having the Oak Knoll remnant prairie as the main site of inspiration for this project we’re giving voice to a space – helping it not disappear while simultaneously forming a relationship with the land we’re on.”