Jade Hoyer, assistant professor of art, and Claire Kelling, assistant professor of statistics, have received a grant from the Puffin Foundation in support of their collaborative art project, “Forecast: A Changing Landscape.” Funding from the Puffin Foundation’s Environmental Activism Grant program will help Prof. Hoyer and Prof. Kelling produce a large-scale artwork illustrating climate change in Southeastern Minnesota.
Hoyer and Kelling will create imagery depicting the Cowling Arboretum, which will feature colored vertical bands that are statistically representative of historic and present annual temperatures. Hoyer will illustrate the present-day Cowling Arboretum landscape while Kelling works with the college’s Weather Station data to process and analyze historical weather records from Rice County. The pair will then translate this data to statistically representative colors correlating to average annual temperatures in the region, providing a creative and accessible visual record of the climate throughout the region’s recorded history. The resulting artwork will be on display as part of a large environmental exhibition celebrating the arboretum’s 100th anniversary at Carleton’s Perlman Teaching Museum in Fall 2026.