A tornado with enough power to blow Dorothy clean out of Kansas blasted through the trails of Stringer’s Ridge in early March. The land was laid to waste – but the trees were not beyond redemption. With the help of RiverRocks, Wild Trails and the Association for Visual Arts, four local artists seek to raise the wasted trees out of the rubble, infusing them with creativity and new life, displaying them on the ridge in the Wild Trails Stump Art Show.
“What a brilliant chance to take something and redeem it … where it communicates something positive, creative,” Wild Trails Stump Show artist Krue Brock says. “It makes us ask, ‘What is the potential in things? What is the potential in me that needs to be pulled out?’ Sometimes it’s a storm.”
After Wild Trails Executive Director Randy Whorton saw the destruction on Stringer’s Ridge, he formed a plan to unite the artist’s hand with the destroyed bits of nature. “We have the most amazing city here … with 56 trailheads within 25 minutes of downtown, but they are hardly ever used,” Whorton says. “Hopefully, the impact of the art show will grow and we can have art placed throughout the trails.”
The project will ultimately serve multiple roles, including luring hibernating trail-lovers and even new hikers out to the trails while challenging the community to experience art in a nontraditional way. “There is no separation between art and life,” says Ann Wilson, executive director of AVA. “The notion of moving art off the gallery walls … it has great potential to help people see art differently.”
Artist Krue BrockWhorton brought the art show to RiverRocks, and those in charge of the 10-day land conservation festival enlisted the help of AVA, which put out a call for artists interested in the project. The Wild Trails Stump Art Show will spotlight the work of local artists Krue Brock, Silverrene Roundtree, Charlie Newton and Jacki Rexford. To select these artists, AVA representatives viewed submissions of the artists’ previous work, as well as their suggested plans for the art show, with specific standards in mind, from the ability to think on a large scale to being able to build a site-specific piece. “Wood is a very unforgiving medium. They had to be artists who are comfortable with that medium,” says Wilson. “Creating artwork around a specific situation is such a different dynamic for an artist, it really extends them.”