Jade Hoyer ’07 makes a practice of observing nature closely. The printmaker and Carleton assistant professor of art has been partnering with students to experiment in making paper from plants in the Cowling Arboretum, including thistle, coneflower, and cattails. But for Equinox/Solstice, a work recently installed at Concordia College’s Cyrus M. Running Gallery, she went farther afield to source materials for her paper, harvesting spotted knapweed, an invasive species, from the Lost Prairie Scientific Area in Hastings.
The work is made up of 94 squares that progress from a soft gray green to a brighter, light green—each precisely replicating the light change each day between the vernal equinox and the first day of summer. She collaborated with Assistant Professor of Statistics Claire Kelling, who helped her calculate how much pigment to add to create each day’s hue.
Part of a broader artistic investigation of invasive species, one that links to her own role as a Minnesota transplant and a biracial Filipina American, the project helps Hoyer connect to her adopted state by making art literally from this place. “I am engaging with fellow invaders, both displaced plant and human kin,” she says. “In the case of the invasive plant species, I am mitigating their adverse impact on this landscape and ecosystem while also offering them my thoughtful engagement as an artist. I’d like to think I’m offering them a home of sorts, too.”