Fritz receives ORED grant
calendar icon26 May 2021
Lincoln, Neb.--Hixson-Lied Professor of Art Dana Fritz had one of three projects at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln awarded an Arts & Humanities Research Enhancement Fund grant for 2021-22 from the Office of Research and Economic Development for her project, “Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape”book and exhibition.
“Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape” makes visible the forces that shaped the Nebraska National Forest at Halsey, once the world’s largest hand-planted forest. Wind, water, planting, thinning, burning, decomposing and sowing all contribute to its unique environmental history.
“I am delighted to have support from a Hixson-Lied faculty grant and an Arts & Humanities Research Enhancement Fund grant for ‘Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape,’ a book and exhibition about Nebraska National Forest,” Fritz said. “Once the world’s largest hand-planted forest, this landscape reveals our complex and evolving ideas about grasslands, forests and climate change from the 19ththrough 21stcenturies. My photographs and the essays and maps in the book endeavor to tell this unfolding story.”
Fritz said there are plans for a book release and exhibition in Lincoln in 2022.
“This large-scale, multi-year project, which includes commissioning essays and maps from colleagues in other disciplines and working with U.S. Forest Service staff, as well as extensive and frequent travel, is not something I could accomplish without financial support,” Fritz said.
Fritz is also a Fellow with the Center for Great Plains Studies, in addition to teaching photography in the School of Art, Art History & Design.
Fritz has produced a small edition artist book, “[Pocket] Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape” that is a preview for the much larger and more extensive 2022 publication.
The artist book will be included in two exhibitions this summer: “Reclamation: Artist Books about the Environment” (https://go.unl.edu/2uk7) in San Francisco and “UNBOUND 10” at Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Professor Emeritus of Art Karen Kunc also has a book in the San Francisco exhibition.
Fritz uses photography to investigate the ways we shape and represent the natural world in cultivated and constructed landscapes. Her work has been exhibited in more than 80 venues. The University of New Mexico Press published her monograph, “Terraria Gigantica: The World Under Glass” in 2017.
Learn more about her work at http://www.danafritz.com.