October 23, 2024 McDaniels, Prado Elevate Art and Agriculture in Wisconsin’s Farm/Art DTOUR

The expansive farmlands in Sauk County, Wisconsin, have long been a symbol of the rural Midwest, but this month, they were also the setting for a unique fusion of art and agriculture. As a part of the Wormfarm Institute’s tenth iteration of Farm/Art DTOUR, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Architecture and Design faculty Scottie McDaniels and Marshall Prado installed an eye-catching structure that seeks to reveal the landscape as highly technical and cloaked in pastoral imagination.

"Rural Construct," a pink, stacked wooden structure stands in the middle of a golden cornfield with rolling green hills in the background under a clear blue sky.

Standing at over 12 feet tall, the installation, “Rural Construct,” combines elements of a deer stand and a duck blind, traditional hunting structures that hold deep significance in rural communities. McDaniels, assistant professor of landscape architecture, studies artifacts as a way people in the Appalachian region curate themselves and reveal a forward-thinking outlook rooted in tradition.

“The installation is not simply a reconfigured hunting structure,” she said. “It references a range of cultural associations to connect and communicate with exhibition visitors. Through occupying the installation, visitors come to know something about the ground.”

The installation is one of 12 in the DTour, a 50-mile, self-guided route through Sauk County working farmlands, punctuated by site-responsive artworks, pasture performances, roadside poetry, local food markets and more.

Graduate students use 3d glasses to assemble a sustainable deer blind designed with CAD software inside the Art and Architecture building on September 20, 2024. Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee. The deer blind was a collaborative project with the School of Landscape Architecture and School of Architecture to prevent lumber waste. When complete, it will be installed in a Wisconsin corn field October 5–14, 2024 as part of the Farm/Art DTour exhibition with the Wormfarm Institute. on September 20, 2024. Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee.

Prado, associate professor of design and structural technology, collaborated with McDaniels to introduce new technologies in designing and building the blind. Through augmented reality and computational design, the pair and student workers constructed the blind in the Art + Architecture Building before transporting it to Wisconsin.

“Technologies such as robotics, cnc milling, digital scanning, computational modeling and other advanced tools are always a part of our work, either explicitly or implicitly,” he said. “A focus of this project was to test if we can use technologies like augmented realty to quickly assemble a complex structure. This resulted in only a minimal amount of waste.”

Although not intended for hunting, McDaniels and Prado intentionally painted the installation neon pink paint to call back to animals’ colorblindness.

“Deer are red-green colorblind and cannot distinguish between red, orange or green. We camouflage these structures into the landscape based on our preferences,” said McDaniels. “By branding a familial rural form in color, we hope to prompt discussions on the complexity of hunting, food systems, and rural necessities.”

As visitors made their way through the Driftless Region, they encountered land-scale art that challenges, inspires, and celebrates the rich cultural landscape. And as they passed by McDaniels and Prado’s towering structure in the cornfield, they were invited to see the land—and their place within it—through a new lens.

Dustin Del Moro, a third-year graduate student in landscape architecture, measures wood to build a sustainable deer blind inside the Art and Architecture building on September 20, 2024. When complete, the deer blind will be installed in a Wisconsin corn field October 5–14, 2024 as part of the Farm/Art DTour exhibition with the Wormfarm Institute. Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee.

A graduate student uses 3d glasses to assemble a sustainable deer blind designed with CAD software inside the Art and Architecture building on September 20, 2024. Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee. The deer blind was a collaborative project with the School of Landscape Architecture and School of Architecture to prevent lumber waste. When complete, it will be installed in a Wisconsin corn field October 5–14, 2024 as part of the Farm/Art DTour exhibition with the Wormfarm Institute. on September 20, 2024. Photo by Steven Bridges/University of Tennessee.