How a former teacher led hundreds to help create community art in Rochester

ROCHESTER – The phrases artfully flowing on a new mural of a pond at Quarry Hill Nature Center speak to the memories made there:

“Quarry Hill is my quiet place,” one says. “Quarry Hill is where I proposed to my wife,” reads another. A third calls it “a place to play and grow.”

The center has long drawn visitors to soak in its flowing prairie grass, scenic overlooks and wooded trails. Now state and local leaders are hoping to draw visitors to bask in its art.

It’s part of the Minnesota Parks Artist-in-Residence program, aimed at connecting people with art and the outdoors throughout the state — and maybe even bringing people to parks they wouldn’t typically visit.

“You can have a great facility, but if people don’t have a mind to visit because that’s not their thing, there’s not much you can really do to push them,” said Renee Mattson, executive director of the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission. “But if you do something that’s a little bit different, that piques their interest, they’re apt to come for that.”

Rochester artist Cassandra Buck painted the Quarry Hill mural and made fabric panels at a butterfly sanctuary in the popular Rochester park. She also created art in other area parks, all after soliciting inspiration — including drawings and paintings — from hundreds of people in the community.

For Buck, who remembers going to Quarry Hill on field trips as a child and whose own children visit it today, the program offers a chance to create something she wishes she’d had growing up in Rochester.

“We as human beings, we need to have art in our lives,” Buck said. “That’s what I want to keep in my community for my kids and for other people’s kids.”

The Parks and Trails Commission, along with the Metropolitan Council and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, enlisted a dozen artists across the state to work with parks on projects. The $800,000 program is funded from the state’s Legacy Amendment, which uses state sales tax money for environmental and cultural initiatives.

In greater Minnesota, four artists are bringing murals, collages, sculptures and even interactive apps to local parks in and around Rochester, Granite Falls, Alexandria, Maple Lake and Clear Lake; another four are working at parks in the Twin Cities area; and four others are working with the Department of Natural Resources at parks near Bemidji, Silver Bay and Center City.

Artists are putting the finishing touches on their projects, and parks officials are planning another round of statewide artist residencies next year.

Buck wanted to “paint big” as a muralist, she said. She also incorporated fabric designs into some of the installations, a nod to her mixed-media work over the past 15 years.

At Quarry Hill, about 200 people told her about their memories of nature, she said. At Cascade Lake, about 150 people used kits to draw and paint scenes of good times they’d had on the beach or the playground, which inspired Buck’s mural depicting swirling movement through nature.

And at Oxbow, one of the oldest parks in the area, dozens of participants shared what they knew about the park’s history, and about the zoo named after a well-known veterinarian who helped found it. There, Buck designed historical signs and mosaics made out of art people submitted.

Projects like the parks residency program are important for growing communities, says Anastasia Shartin of the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council.

Shartin pointed to other cities’ arts projects as key drivers connecting people to their communities: Lanesboro has embraced performing arts and citywide art fairs, for instance. Austin, which has a yearly arts festival, recently renovated its historic Paramount Theatre.

“The more projects … that use arts as a vehicle for engagement, the better,” Shartin said.