A rendering by artist Emily Victory.
Waving prairie grasses, clear water, red-headed woodpeckers overhead, and deer bounding across the trail. These are the usual sights at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, a 5,600 acre mosaic of restored prairie, savanna and woodland, intermixed with carefully marked research plots.
Artist-in-residence Emily Victory sees the reserve through a different lens.
“I’m not trying to paint the plants,” she said. “I’m trying to paint how I see the experiments. In my mind it’s more of a gridded black and white … these [art pieces] will have color but it will be gradients based on the data.”
Victory is nearing the tail end of the LIFEFORMS Artist-in-residence Program. A partnership between the College of Biological Sciences’ (CBS) Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, The Bakken Museum, and the CBS Conservatory and Botanical Collection, the residency culminates in an exhibition at The Bakken Museum that begins Nov. 12. Both Cedar Creek and the Conservatory have hosted artists in past years, and over the last few years have explored combining their efforts. This year marks the first involvement of The Bakken, and Victory’s art matches the museum’s science and technology focus.
"We are thrilled to host Emily Victory’s LIFEFORMS exhibition and partner with Cedar Creek and the Conservancy,” says President and CEO Jenn Hensely. “I can't wait to see the inspiration she drew from our collection. Her work explores the fascinating intersection of art and science, inviting visitors to look closer, ask questions, and see the natural world in new ways. That spirit of curiosity and discovery feels right at home here at The Bakken."
With the option of overnight stays at the Icon House – a UMN student-designed building at Cedar Creek – and access to the CBS Conservatory and the archives at The Bakken, Victory is fully immersed in the underlying math behind the science. Her pieces are still in progress, but she has been sharing updates with President and CEO of The Bakken Museum, Jenn Hensley, as well as Caitlin Barale Potter, associate director of Cedar Creek, and Alex Eilts, director of the CBS Conservatory.
Recalling the first time he saw Victory’s work, Eilts said, “It was such a different take. I’m very used to the idea of pie charts, or phylogenies that are formatted in circles. But she brings together data visually to create something that is at once familiar but entirely unique.”
Victory developed that unique, mathematical style along a winding journey toward an art career. She earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics. Then, pursuing art at night while teaching math, she received a mentorship grant and studied with a local artist. For the first time, she could picture life as a working artist, so she decided to go back to school, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art from the University of Minnesota in 2012. Victory recalled a day that changed how she approached her dual interests of art and math:
“When I was at the U, I would paint realistic things, and then when I didn’t know what to paint I would do math proofs in my sketchbook. One of my professors saw [the proofs] and I shut my sketchbook quickly.”
The professor, interested in the proofs, assured Victory that “anything can be art.”
“That totally changed my life. I think in mathematics,” Victory said. “When I could just focus on pure math and how it would look, that’s when I became uber obsessed.”
The LIFEFORMS Artist Residency has been the perfect place for Victory’s obsession to take hold.
Caitlin Barale Potter, Cedar Creek’s associate director, said: “What I think is really powerful about her work is that she takes things that are hard to conceptualize, and makes them really appealing to people that are not necessarily drawn to math. She sees these patterns across all three of the sites where the residency takes place.” For CBS, connecting research sites through Victory’s artwork unlocks a new way to showcase science to the public. -Hugh Gabriel
See the art and science for yourself starting Nov. 12 at The Bakken Museum.