7 items | 1 visits
Pages related to landscapes and poetry, particularly around the changing landscapes and lost landscapes of the suburban margins.
Updated on Jul 11, 11
Created on Jul 11, 11
Category: Entertainment & Arts
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Consumer hunger for residential land and infrastructure is slowly destroying many historical sites located near the steadily expanding fringes of suburbia. Weather also takes its toll on beautiful rural buildings that have been abandoned by their owners.
The best of these landscapes are vivid historical documents -- mosaics in which all our activities are embedded. They assuage our nostalgia for the past, remind us collectively of where we have been, and help to create a sense of place.
Today there is a growing awareness among Minnesotans that this rural agricultural heritage is worthy of acknowledgment and protection. Yet its landscape is fast disappearing as non-farm land uses, and changes in agricultural technologies and practices, create a new visual record on the landscape.
Dramatic changes have taken place over the last century. At one time more than 90% of the nation farmed, which dwindled to only 2% of the total population according to a 1994 New York Times report.[iv]
Craig Blietz sensitizes us to this grim statistic in his selection of farms on the periphery of a burgeoning tourist community, where the original function of the farm has been displaced by a new economy. The buildings are well cared for, however, many no longer serve the purpose they held as functioning farms, but are now leased for a new purpose. In some cases, the barns have become mere storage facilities for expanding business ventures in town.
There is a paradox established in the hauntingly beautiful landscapes, depicting painstakingly rendered, strong vibrant structures, that mask an emptiness and abandonment created by the prosperity of a transitioning lifestyle in Door County, Wisconsin, a community burdened by its own natural attractiveness.
In Spring 2000, we began to place coins of our own design at various sites we traverse as we lead our lives. In doing so, we are attempting to recognize and mark places that we believe deserve our attention and thought.
Some sites have been chosen because they are rich with memory. Some mark the location of major or minor (but significant) historical or cultural events. Other sites are contested places - places where people have fought for ownership or control of land, resources, or communities. And we have chosen some places simply because we think they might reveal something about the evolving relationship between human beings and the world they inhabit or once inhabited.
7 items | 1 visits
Pages related to landscapes and poetry, particularly around the changing landscapes and lost landscapes of the suburban margins.
Updated on Jul 11, 11
Created on Jul 11, 11
Category: Entertainment & Arts
URL: