In completion of her 2023 ARTservancy Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Superior assistant professor of writing Meg Muthupandiyan is a featured artist at Gallery 224 in Port Washington, Wisconsin, through September 1.

“I am the only writer among the 2023-2024 artist residents, one who just so happens to create field study illustrations as part of my poetic process,” said Muthupandiyan. “I am deeply grateful to ARTservancy for its commitment to furthering visual artists’ and writers’ role in environmental conservation. Both play an important role in drawing audiences’ attention back to the land communities that we all belong to and will, in the end, reclaim us for their own.”

Her exhibition, “The Mastery of Desire,” features field study illustrations and other visual art that she has created as part of her poetic practice. A poetry reading and artist’s reception will take place on August 3 from 4 to 7 p.m.

“The exhibition takes its name from the title of one of my poems – a celebration of the beauty of interdependence displayed in the natural world,” said Muthupandiyan. “Throughout the exhibition, viewers engage with pieces I’ve created at every stage of my writing process, including field study illustrations of native species, illuminated mandalas of land communities featured in poems, brush drawings of birds celebrated in other poetry and book covers featuring native species.”

ARTservancy began in September 2018. Artist Residents create a body of artwork inspired by the property, culminating in a month-long exhibition at Gallery 224 in Port Washington. ARTservancy encourages collaborations with community partners to highlight access and give permission to create in natural spaces, breaking down the gates of a metaphorical Walled Garden. ARTservancy’s mission is to protect and establish empathetic roles in these spaces, while advocating for equal, safe and innovative artwork.  

For Muthupandiyan, the ARTservancy Fellowship allowed her to share many of her discoveries.

“As the culmination of an artistic residency, most of the pieces were created over the past 14 months,” she said. “The illustrations and poems in the exhibition feature species I’ve encountered within communally held lands that will be protected into perpetuity, including Tall Pines Conservancy, Elm Grove Park, Aburi Botanical Gardens, Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station at UW Waukesha.”

During the ARTservancy Fellowship, Muthupandiyan’s poetry volume “Of the Earth and Other Desires” was published and awarded the John Rezmerski Manuscript Prize by the League of Minnesota Poets.

“The volume includes a number of poems written in conjunction with visits made to Tall Pines and other land conservancies,” she said. “Another high point is simply being able to display my illustrations – they offer a unique vantage point of how writers use the visual arts.”

Completing the fellowship gave Muthupandiyan a wealth of new experiences and understanding of her creative process.

“It feels great to have completed this residency,” she said. “My project demanded a level of curation I’ve never engaged in before. It’s my habit to simply put illustrations in my writing portfolio as future prompts until they are used to write a poem, then to scan and give them away. I never knew how much doodling I do until I had to aggregate my illustrations for 14 months.”