{"id":47485,"date":"2017-11-10T16:10:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T16:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/?p=47485"},"modified":"2017-11-10T16:10:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T16:10:49","slug":"art-meets-science-in-hagfors-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/2017\/11\/10\/art-meets-science-in-hagfors-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Meets Science in Hagfors Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Steve<\/a>Steve \u201967 B.A. and Sandy Batalden say they were attracted to the \u201cArt and Identity\u201d project when they saw the \u201cstunning\u201d work of Amy Rice. Rice\u2019s series, Six Minnesota Wildflowers to Meet and Know,<\/i> was commissioned by Augsburg University for the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion. \u201cWe immediately liked her work,\u201d explains Sandy, who shares with Rice an appreciation for letterpress printing, which is featured in the works. \u201cNot only is she using original materials in her paintings, but the unusual botanical subject matter seems to fit perfectly in a building intended for the life sciences.\u201d In a recent donor statement, the Bataldens wrote that \u201cbeyond botanical accuracy, Amy\u2019s drawings transport us into an entirely new realm as leaves and flowers become frames for musical scores or other chosen text woven into each piece. What a creative, beautiful expression for the university of the twenty-first century!\u201d<\/p>\n

Art and Identity<\/h3>\n

In her artist\u2019s statement, Rice explains that she began her process by hand-drawing and hand-cutting stencils of rare Minnesota plants. \u201cThe plants are \u2018painted\u2019 in with a variety of antique and vintage paper: maps and plat books of Minnesota counties (I only used maps from counties where the plants are actually found), Norwegian-language liturgy from the 1870s, sheet music, handwritten letters from early Minnesotans, homework, biology textbooks and early Augsburg ephemera.\u201d She notes that her interest in native plants connects to her Christian faith tradition. \u201cIt is the sacred trust we have been given to be stewards of our Earth. My Grandpa Ed, a seventh generation Midwestern farmer, knew the names of every plant on his large farm. He didn\u2019t own them; he was responsible for them.\u201d That, she wrote, was one way he modeled faith in action.<\/p>\n

Beauty and Inspiration<\/h3>\n

Steve notes that the timeliness of the \u201cArt and Identity\u201d project captured his own and Sandy\u2019s imagination. \u201cWe are living in a deeply troublesome and dangerous Trump era when, especially here in the Arizona southwest, walls are political symbols meant to divide sharply and impose barriers. What a wonderful idea for Hagfors Center to refashion walls as settings for beauty and inspiration!\u201d
\nAugsburg commissioned Six Minnesota Wildflowers<\/i> and works by other artists to express its core identity, grounded in durable faith, inclusion, and experiential learning. \u201cGreat universities manage to nurture creative artistic production alongside scientific discovery,\u201d say the Bataldens, who have spent their careers in higher education. Steve is professor emeritus of Russian history and founding director of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Arizona State University. Sandy is a retired university librarian, bibliographer, and scholarly book editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve \u201967 B.A. and Sandy Batalden say they were attracted to the \u201cArt and Identity\u201d project when they saw the \u201cstunning\u201d work of Amy Rice. Rice\u2019s series, Six Minnesota Wildflowers to Meet and Know, was commissioned by Augsburg University for the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion. \u201cWe immediately liked her work,\u201d explains Sandy, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,7,6,3],"tags":[122,20,82,58,9,8,12,42],"class_list":["post-47485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-augsburg-fund","category-donor-recognition","category-gift-announcements","category-giving","category-giving-to-augsburg","tag-advancement","tag-alumni","tag-art-identity","tag-gift-announcement","tag-gift-announcements","tag-giving-blog","tag-hagfors-center","tag-planned-giving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47488,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47485\/revisions\/47488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/giving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}