As visitors make a trip up the North Shore for Fall Colors, they can seek out and enjoy recent art by Finland, Minnesota artist Catherine Meier at several stops up Highway 61.
The University of Minnesota Duluth is the first stop, in the newly refreshed fourth floor of the Kathryn A. Martin Library. There, visitors and students alike can read, write, and reflect under Meier’s Navigating by Color series, three paintings entitled “East,” “South,” and “West, from where the Baptism River meets Lake Superior.”
Meier’s work, funded by an Institute on the Environment grant, is inspired by her life on the shores of Lake Superior and by Jonathan Raban’s book, Passage to Juneau: A Sea and its Meanings. Raban writes of Polynesian sailors who once sailed the ocean without the aid of navigational instruments. According to Meier,
They could gain their bearings and direct their course by reading the colors of the sea, feeling the shifts of waves through their bodies, smell the air for scents that revealed proximity to land. But then came the mariners of old who found a way to conquer the sea by reducing it to an intersecting mesh of latitude and longitude, with the compass as aide and tool. A ship could glide across the ocean without needing to recognize the vast complexity of information that it contains.
Meier shares her own experience of finding her way along the lake.
Two decades since first coming to the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, I am starting to make work about this place. I can live here because of the vast horizon of Lake Superior, but it is completely different than the spaciousness of the Plains, where I am from. I cannot walk into that openness. Here I always stand on an edge-line. Here I am learning the language of the currents and surface disruptions of water and the density and lines of ancient rock. I am finding my way.
Visitors to the Martin Library may find the space and reflective atmosphere adequate to finding their own way, and their own place in our changing environment.
As visitors journey up the shore, they can see more of Meier’s work. The Silver Bay Public Library has, on display, a large-format drawing of Shovel Point.
More art can be seen at her online gallery, at https://catherinemeier.com/.
If you need a break on the long drive, Meier is one of several artists in a brief documentary about environmental art by Dan Fitzpatrick. The documentary can be seen on 18 kiosks at waysides, rest areas, hotels and other locations on Highway 61. You can also catch the documentary online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqQvfu_nyOY
The documentary and Meier’s “Navigating by Color” series are both funded by the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment.
The Martin Library is located at 416 Library Drive, Duluth, MN, 55812-3001 and is open M-Th 7:30 a.m. to Midnight, Friday 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m, Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m, and Sunday 1 p.m. to Midnight.
The Silver Bay Public Library is located at 9 Davis Dr, Silver Bay, MN, 55614 and is open from 10am to 6:30pm Monday through Thursday, 10am to 6pm on Friday.
Meier’s art is available to view 24 hours a day online at her online gallery, at https://catherinemeier.com/.
