Farm/Art DTour

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courtesy Wormfarm Institute

Art along a creek.

"Fluvial," a 2020 Farm/Art DTour installation by Sheila Novak, Emilie Bouvier and Crysten Nesseth.

(2022 Isthmus pick) This annual combination of rural food traditions with art — visual, literary, music — is spread across Sauk County this year in a route that's closer to Madison than in previous years. Seven artists will be installing site-responsive artworks in farm fields along the 50-mile route, which starts at County Highway PF just east of Prairie du Sac and winds through the scenic Baraboo Hills, hitting Leland, Witwen and Plain among other settlements. Weekend "pasture performances and pop-up fermentation events" will take place along the route. The event is best understood through the program (at wormfarminstitute.org) and by taking in the sights.

media release: The Farm/Art DTour is a self-guided, 50-mile drive through the beautiful working lands of Sauk County, Wisconsin, punctuated by ArtWorks (large-scale temporary art installations), Field Notes (interpretive signage), pasture performances, roadside poetry, local food and more. The DTour meanders through the working farmland and unique geology of the Driftless Region, and through the traditional homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation and many other Indigenous peoples who continue to live here.

Artists are invited to propose original site-responsive works for public view October 5-14, 2024. A jury will select a diverse group of artists to respond to the land. We seek artists — individuals or teams, formally trained or self-taught, from all disciplines — who are interested in creating works that engage with the landscape, farmers, landowners, and surrounding rural communities. Successful past projects have ranged from sculptural objects, to interactive environments, to work activated by natural processes. Some have invited hands-on participation, utilized existing agricultural infrastructure, or were installed on buildings in the small towns along the route. Click here for images of past installations. "DTourists" are usually traveling by car and guided by a map, so successful proposals tend to be visually compelling and large-scale. Artists are responsible for both installation and de-installation and will have about two weeks to install and one week to de-install.

Eight artists and artist teams have been commissioned to create new artworks for the biennial Farm/Art DTour through rural Sauk County, WI (October 5-14). We received 156 applications from 29 states and 15 countries—the largest and most diverse pool of candidates since the DTour began in 2011!

The artists—Brian Sobaski; Cathy McCauley, Shari Gullo and Pamela Self; Gabriela Jiménez Marván, Ryan Rotweiler and Leonardo Linares; Jongil Ma; Mars Patterson; Matthew Vivirito; Rachel Dohner and Olivia Comai; and Scottie McDaniel and Marshall Prado—will receive funding to create large-scale, site-responsive artworks that will be temporarily planted in working farm fields along the 50-mile DTour route. Click here to learn more and don't miss the DTour this fall!

About Wormfarm Institute

Wormfarm Institute is a nonprofit organization working to build a sustainable future for agriculture and the arts by fostering vital links between people and the land. An evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology and fertile ground for creative work, Wormfarm explores the links between rural and urban communities within and beyond the food chain, creating opportunities for cross-sector collaboration. For more information, visit wormfarminstitute.org