And now a Blog....

Welcome to the Kickapoo Community Art Blog!

This blog was created to chronicle and support the efforts of Kickapoo Valley artists to infuse the landscapes of the watershed with large-scale public art installations which will inspire to create a universal connection and common ground among all creatures which call it home.

It begins with Alvin Felch's "As so Above and Below", a monumental white oak sculpture now in its pre-construction phase and seeking community support. Visit our Facebook Cause page for a summary of the project and links to donate to the cause. We're hoping this blog venue will not only serve to establish this first community sculpture but lead to more artists coming on board to follow Alvin's lead, spreading the movement and pushing it forward.

"“As so Above and Below” channels a conscience flow of communal intent, emanating from us, extending through the sculptural form and reaching out into the cosmos. We allow our imaginations to enter these surrogate shapes, grounded in our past, seeking the untenable revelation of the unknown above. Our communal impression will linger on in our cultural memory through the generations, magnified by the universal language of gesture.

These figures inspire noble yet humble thoughts and seek to elicit conversation. They celebrate our connection and our eternal conversation with this precious garden , love and quest for meaning, and where we continue our communion with the earth looking ever upward and outward toward our common future.

Let us imagine this sculpture together, until it exists, investing in it our collective intent; speaking as a community for all diverse communities in the Kickapoo watershed; beyond it to all communities of the Driftless; and further still to all communities struggling for that balance between what is enough for ourselves and what must be preserved so there is enough for our children’s children even unto the seventh generation and beyond."

Alvin Felch is a life-long artist by vocation, a designer craftsman by profession, a carver of wood and stone and an advocate for environmental ethics. Having lived closely with the land of the Kickapoo, Alvin has long intended to create art worthy of the public trust. It is with this singular sense of purpose that Alvin is pursuing this collaborative endeavor with the support of the community.

“These beautifully sculpted figures will be animated by our collective spirit, manifest in the landscape, in a place chosen as fully suited to communicate the connection among the land, the sky and those who come to bear witness. There are socio-economic benefits to supporting the arts that can’t be quantified by scientific or statistical means – the intangible value of a community’s identity, its image and its imagination. Monumental sculpture raises the intrinsic worth of place by communicating to visitors the value a community places on its public spaces. To witness one’s own clear sentiments and values embodied in monumental sculpture is ennobling, connecting us to the land that sustains us as we enter an uncertain future”

This is the mission of the Kickapoo Community Art Fund, established by the Kickapoo Cultural Exchange of Gays Mills, and begins with this sculpture.

Please join us in this endeavor and follow our cause on Facebook.