Buckvold bonds through art to natural world

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

Visual artist Anne Buckvold of St. Joseph conjures up a virtual menagerie of Minnesota flora and fauna in what amounts to a whimsical ode to the natural world.

Her pen-and-ink drawings are teeming with shimmering fish, floating swans, quacking ducks, leaping frogs, hovering hummingbirds, chirpy chipmunks, rockin’ robins, fallen leaves, the Minnesota Lady Slipper and tree bark. It’s all quintessential “Minnesota.” And it’s Minnesota filtered through a whimsical, celebratory vision.

Buckvold’s drawings are currently featured in an ongoing exhibit dubbed “Chapter One: Abundance” at the Minnesota Street Market in downtown St. Joseph.

Although she’s loved making art works all of her life, Buckvold decided last year to pursue art with a renewed commitment and sees it as an extension of other passions in her life that include environmental protection, grassroots political and social activism, and a deep affinity for the natural world.

“Somewhere in my art is a story,” she said. “I am just not sure what it is yet. But for now it starts in a place of abundance. What does a robin really look like? And how does she build her nest? Does the hummingbird live for the honeysuckle? Or does the honeysuckle live for the hummingbird? The beauty and uniqueness of a single oak leaf intrigues me and I wonder, how does that happen?”

She said she believes people should reacquaint themselves with their unique Minnesota surroundings and see nature with a freshened vision.

“If we could draw a border around some part of this vast mystery and call it Minnesota, let’s do it. Then, let’s get to know her very well so we are well-suited to care for her.”

Buckvold’s artistic vision is akin to the way children see the world around them – kids, no scales on their eyes, seeing the world in newborn freshness, unjaded. And her pen-and-ink drawings often resemble children’s drawings with their whimsical shapes, squiggles, dots and dashes, cartoon exaggerations. There is a spontaneity about her work, with her lines and flourishes pulled out of thin air, on the fly, quickly coming from a sense of wonder and delight.

One of her drawings is of 27 pussycat hats, all done in shades of pink, a series of hats that elicits smiles because some of the hats are cat faces, more or less, some of them drawn with full features expressing unique “purrsonalities” while others are blank or just beginning to form – one containing just a squiggle line, the suggestion of a mouth; another a couple of dashes and dots (eyes?); still another wriggly scritches that could be whiskers. Altogether, the series of hats on the page elicits a whimsical symphony of sorts about minds being formed, personalities emerging.

Another fun drawing is of a robin holding a long worm in its beak, the worm dangling beneath the surface of a lake into the mouth of a fish.

Buckvold often draws the shape of Minnesota and fills it with a teeming-to-bursting series of fish or leaves or birds.

Her drawings are examples of minimalism – seemingly simple, stylized, no wasted lines, just a lot of fun and whimsy that can lead to some serious pondering.

“I’m always challenging myself,” she said in an interview with the St. Joseph Newsleader. “I’m always looking for bettering relationships, and I think we should start with the natural world. We have such an abundance in the natural world. We have enough. There is abundance everywhere. Where is it going? Do we know what is around us? Are we relating?”

Born in Minneapolis, Buckvold studied as an exchange student in Greenland where she began to learn the Danish language. Later, she studied for four years in Copenhagen, Denmark and earned a degree in social pedagogy, which stemmed from her love of early-childhood education. She then earned a master’s degree in social work, specializing in gerontology, from the University of Maine.

Back in Minnesota, she was employed at the St. John’s Prep School, then started a daycare using early-childhood education tools. Buckvold has been an active member of ISAIAH, a faith-based coalition of more than 100 congregations in Minnesota that carries their faith into programs for social justice. Last year, Buckvold competed for the State House District 13A legislative seat but lost to incumbent Jeff Howe, a Rockville Republican.

During the political campaign, Buckvold said she noticed people had become so polarized they were not listening to one another much anymore, not understanding one another. It was a dispiriting experience, she recalled.

After the campaign, she kept asking herself, “What are the things I really know and care about?”

That is when she decided to dedicate more time to her art, to begin a journey of discovery via the natural world and its relationships, all of it right here in Minnesota, right in her “backyard,” so to speak.

Buckvold’s husband, Sam Johnson, is a pottery teacher at the College of St. Benedict. They have four children – Harriet, 10; Jesse, 8; and 4-year-old twin girls, Ingrid and Francine.