Chicago’s most obvious benefits are Chicago-centric: museums, galleries, restaurants, neighborhoods… The less obvious benefits are regional. Chicago is hard by a ton of really interesting places and beautiful sights. The Indiana Dunes are an hour away. Milwaukee is under three hours. Starved Rock State Park, Devil’s Lake, Grand Rapids, Turkey Run State Park, Madison, Waterfall Glen, Wisconsin Dells… We’ll never run out of day and weekend trips.

I know we haven’t truly dug into Chicago yet, so it seems like cheating to step out, but we’ve taken our first excursion: three days in rural Wisconsin on an art tour with my sister, Nef. Specifically, DTour, a biannual rural art fair put on by the Wormfarm Institute. Site-specific art installations are scattered over a 50 mile route, interspersed with informative signage, Burma Shave inspired roadside poetry, and side trips to local artisans and locally crafted deliciousness.

The point of DTour is to bridge the gap between urban and rural, between art and industry. The artsy are exposed to the beauty of the landscape and the vibrancy of the farmlands, and the farmers are able to look at their world through a different lens, to recontextualize the utilitarian as aesthetic. Everyone wins.

One of the first things that happened as we started the driving tour was confusion over what was art. We’d pass a field and ask ourselves if what we were looking at was art or farming. After our first few actual installations it was clear, but the initial confusion was pretty entertaining, and led, I think, to exactly the conversation that Wormfarm was looking to stimulate.

Art In The Field

We took two full days to complete DTour. It could have been done in a single day, but only if you skipped the artisan’s studios that were off the main route. What’s the point of that? There were 15 site-specific installations on the tour, and we have photos of most of them. Here they are, in no particular order.

Here Be Dragons

Almost overwhelming in scale, Here Be Dragons was built on one of the irrigation rigs we initially mistook for art. So we were kind of right after all.

Preserve

An entire structure filled with jars. A few had actual objects, like flowers or herbs, but the majority had pictures on film, illuminated by the natural light passing through the open building.

Seed Art

Woven Willow Sanctuary

These were individual structures strewn about a large field with a stream. You could sit inside them, and the interiors were decorated with charms and talismans. Sitting inside and taking in the peaceful landscape absolutely felt like being in a sanctuary.

As It Is…

This piece was staged inside an abandoned church. There was a weathervane on the roof that caught the wind and rotated the sculpture inside.

There was also a surprising piece hanging on the wall made of eggshells.

Lady Corn

You could climb inside and operate the pulleys that moved the eyes and waved the little corn arms.

Which, of course, we did. Because we are, all of us, five years old.

Signs O’ The Times

The route was also littered with what seemed like permanent signage, helpfully explaining core concepts, such as Sky, Soil, and Ethics. I’m sure it’s hard to be a farmer and not accept scientific facts like erosion and conservation. But the signs, placed on people’s farms, walked a delicate path around things like climate change or anything potentially divisive, while still making the case for the need to protect and nurture our farmlands. The goal, after all, was to bridge the urban/rural divide, not exacerbate it.

Performance Art

In addition to the installations there were a number of live performances. The one we most wanted to see, the Hayrake Ballet, was only staged one day, the week before we got there. The Times just did a writeup on DTour and included a short video of the performance, and the full performance is here on YouTube. So sorry to have missed it.

We did catch another of the live performances, a site-specific dance called Damp Edges. It lasted several hours, which seemed cruel to the performers, as it was a pretty chilly day and they were, as advertised, damp. In a nice touch there were picture frames set up around the perimeter, so you could look through them to frame the performance.

As we were driving along the route we saw a guitarist sitting alone in a field. Performance or cry for help? Performance, as it turned out, by Andrew. Andrew is based in Chicago, and his full band, Orillia, is having its debut album launch party in a few weeks. Of course we’re going. We’re field fans!

The Hills Are Alive…

If the whole point of DTour was to expose city folk to the beauty of the rural landscape, mission accomplished. While not as objectively spectacular as, say, the Sahara, the region has plenty of subtle beauty. It didn’t hurt that we visited mid-October, as the leaves were starting to turn.

DTour’s location is in part of the Driftless Area, also known as the Paleozoic Plateau, about 24,000 square miles across Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The ice skipped this area during the last ice age, leaving behind a topography dramatically different than the glaciated areas surrounding it.

When glaciers retreat they leave behind drift, a mix of rubble ranging in scale from silt to boulders, which buries whatever had been there before. The Driftless Area, never manhandled by glaciers, maintained its pre-ice age topography. Water erosion has continued unabated, carving the existing landscape deeper into the plateau. The Driftless is a little time machine, a fascinating geologic snapshot of ancient America.

That landscape seems well suited to corn. Like the rest of the Midwest. I’ve driven through plenty of corn panoramas, but I’ve never noted anything particular except their visual monotony. Perhaps it was that the corn fields on DTour were part of the rolling landscape, and not flat expanses cleaved in twain by an interstate. But I suspect it was more that I just stopped and looked closely for the first time. But damn. Even the cornfields were beautiful.

Corn, we discovered, is surprisingly noisy.

Fuck me. Even the clouds seemed extra beautiful. Farm living is the life for me!

Local Artisans

David is a charming old goat, proud to show off the disfiguring scars from his many broken bones. More importantly, he is a ridiculously creative metalworker. Honestly, most of this kind of work leaves me cold, tending as it does towards adorable little robot figures made of nuts and bolts or steampunk hoohah. But David brings a sculptor’s eye to found metal objects and creates works of surprising grace. Rather than the mechanical rigidity his components might suggest, his pieces are metallic poems of movement and rhythm. Unaccountably, because it is not at first glance our esthetic, we were drawn to the work.

His grounds are littered with sculptures in situ, and his workshop is a delight on its own.

There were also, as was to be expected, many, many cheeses and meats on offer. Far from being basic, the locally produced foods were rich and complex, probably from being made so close to the source. We ferried home an inappropriate amount of calories. Next time we’ll bring a cooler.

This entire experience was shockingly similar to the sorts of road trips we take on our international travels, and a great reminder that culture is where you find it. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with speaking the language and understanding how money works. When we’re finally done traveling the globe, it’s nice to know that adventures still await us in our backyard.