Students ‘think like a prairie’ with hands-on art experience

In early September, high schoolers from North Valley Career and Technology Center waded through hip-high prairie with plastic containers and bags, collecting seed heads, grasses and spoonfuls of soil. 

In the days after, what they gathered from the prairie of South Branch Bison Ranch near Grafton were transformed into art: paint pigment from soils, plants pressed into clay for dinner plates, grasses embedded in paper made from recycled newspapers. 

For student John Calles, stepping into the prairie gave him a new perspective. 

“I knew prairies existed, but I didn’t really think much about them,” Calles said. “We walked through the prairie picking out plants for the paper we made, and walking through it I understood how thick and lush it was. It was really cool.” 

The experience was part of a project called “Thinking Like a Prairie” backed by a grant from the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust.

The program brought Canadian-American artist Austen Camille to hold a series of interactive workshops with local students, melding artmaking with a better understanding of soil health and grassland ecology. 

In the spring, Camille will return to join the students and others from the community for a “Prairie Potluck” dinner, with the art the students created on display and the plates they made from clay and grasses as their dinner plates. 

At the event, keynote speakers will share approaches to grassland management as part of their final lesson. 

Camille set up shop not in a gallery but in the conference room of the Walsh County Soil Conservation District.

“It’s almost a little studio space,” Camille said. “I’ve got paints and papers spread out - it’s like a little artist residency, which is pretty great.” 

Camille first connected with district conservation manager and writer/podcaster Josh Anderson after their work appeared in the same journal. 

A months long exchange eventually turned into a grant proposal aimed at finding a way for students to better experience and listen to the prairie. 

“Art is a really phenomenal tool for learning how to get closer to the land, to create new types of relationships with land,” Camille said. “I think it's a really good tool for learning how to notice a place closer and better and a little differently.”

From pasture to classroom—and back again

The bison ranch visit, followed by two days of workshops, allowed students a closer look at soils, plant communities and the interrelationship of animals to the land. 

Camille showed students how to turn soils into pigment for paints, as well as how seed heads, grasses and other natural material could be turned into prairie paper. 

Stems and seeds that students pressed into the clay plates will be fired and glazed in preparation for the potluck in the spring. 

CTE student Bianca Ramos said the process helped her notice things in the prairie more closely.

“There are a lot of different plants, and they’re homes and food for insects and animals,” Ramos said. “I learned about soil types—and that you can make paint and clay. I thought that was really cool.”

Calles learned how fire was also a natural part of the prairie ecosystem. 

“I learned there’s this grass called Big Bluestem, and it uses fire to germinate,” he said. 

Callahan Lemar, North Valley’s ag education instructor, was able to weave the project into two of her classes: Intro to Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and Botany-Horticulture.

“I'm super proud of the kids,” Lemar said. “They all got out of their comfort zones, tried something new. All of their art was so beautiful and amazing. Even kids that think that they're not artists or not artistic, did really, really well.” 

Seeing all the different versions of a plate or a painting made from the same materials brought its own lesson, she added.

“It was an interesting social experiment even to see, given the same materials and the same processes, how different each of the final products were,” Lemar said. 

Having a return potluck in the spring is intentional, said Camille. 

“That way they can see the same site across seasons and notice the changes in that way,” she said. 

Outdoor space as teacher 

For Anderson, who helped organize the workshops and hosts a podcast called Common Ground: A Prairie Podcast that was seeded by a grant from the NDNRT, said the transformation of the students was great to see. 

“Almost all of them said they had no relationship to art or art making in the beginning, and to see them go in just a few weeks (to creating art), none of them would have identified as an artist,” Anderson said. 

The prairie isn’t a space students often experience close up, he said. 

“Teenagers in my experience here don’t usually spend time in prairie grasslands, or slow down and notice Big Bluestem or Indiangrass or Blanket Flowers,” Anderson said. “I think the prairie landscape kind of opened up to the students and they were really good participants.” 

He sees that act of slowing down as essential.

“Temperate grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem in the world,” Anderson said. “The only way to really appreciate them is to slow down and pay close attention. At interstate speeds or internet speeds, it’s not necessarily conducive to slowing down and paying close attention. In many ways the outdoor space became the teacher in the classroom.” 

Programs like “Thinking Like a Prairie” are fueled by NDNRT’s Small Grant Program, launched in 2014 to emphasize natural resources education opportunities across the state. 

Brenda Newton, who runs administration and the small-grants portfolio for the Trust, said the model is intentionally flexible. 

Entities can apply for up to $10,000 per year for a maximum of two years to develop programs to educate teachers, school kids or the general public about North Dakota’s natural resources. 

“We just really wanted to get that education out there,” Newton said. 

What set this project apart, Newton said, was how it moved prairie from abstraction to something more concrete. 

“One of the parts was learning about plants to use as pigments for paint, and so you’re learning about the plant, why it’s important, how you’re going to use it, what it can do,” Newton said. “That’s the really cool part about this project is it really instills a deeper understanding of what’s out there.” 

Heather Husband, NDNRT’s Meadowlark Initiative Coordinator, said the program helps support arts-and-conservation collaborations across the region. 

“People aren’t going to care about things they don’t value,” Husband said. “You get people to care and value by incorporating it into their everyday life, through something like making a plate.” 

Husband also gave a personal example from growing up in Michigan of how tactile and connective education can have a lasting impact. 

“In one of the summer programs, we dyed yarn different colors and did some weaving, and I still remember that, all of it,” she said. “I remember what the yarn felt like, I remember what a color I thought was going to be purple turned out a little more red.” 

An ongoing classroom

NDNRT’s backing has also supported Anderson’s Common Ground podcast, which he called an ongoing classroom where he and listeners learn from the guests he speaks with. The podcast has aired 12 episodes with maybe 5,000 people reached in that time, he said. 

The show features conversations with ranchers, soil scientists, birders and conservationists from across North Dakota and beyond. 

“The podcast has allowed me to learn from a wide range of folks, from people who are working in conservation and who are land stewards themselves,” Anderson said. 

Husband said the medium helps reach wider audiences.  

“Podcasts are what farmers on their tractors are listening to, what we listen to when we’re driving, what kids listen to,” she said. “It’s just such a relatable outlet.” 

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