"My work as an eco-poet and an illustrator goes hand in hand. I’m a walker, a pilgrim, actually, and on my often four-to-five-mile daily walks, I sketch, and later illustrate, those small details in the land community that speak to me, from rain drops on goldenrod, to the otherworldly call of a sandhill crane over the ridge, or a fresh racoon print in a dusting of snow. Most of my poems spring directly from encounters I’ve had with plants and animals in my land community."
Megan Muthupandiyan's inaugural art exhibition, The Mastery of Desire, is being held at Gallery 224 in Port Washington, Wisconsin from July 5 to September 5, 2024. It features pieces created during the various stages of her writing process as a nature writer, 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.
As the culmination of a 14 month artistic residency with ARTServancy, most of the pieces were created over the past fourteen months. The illustrations and poems in the exhibition feature species she studied within communally held lands, or lands and waterways which 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. Visual artists Megan Woodard Johnson and Kathryn E. Martin are also featured artists until September 5th.
An Artist's Reception and Poetry Reading will be held on August 3rd from 4-7 p.m. The public is welcome.
