INTEGRATING FINE ART AND SCIENCE TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE WHITE RIVER BADLANDS

For over thirteen years now, the Badlands Working Group of Slippery Rock University as established by Dr. Patrick Burkhart has regularly included artists along with the scientists, both professionals and students who jointly investigate the landscape, particularly Badlands National Park, SD. Collaborating between institutions as well as disciplines. Students and faculty work as a team, positively influencing each other while submerged in the field far outside any classroom. Pedagogical strategies are largely experiential and cooperative, including peer mentoring with undergraduate students. Returning students and alumni mentor novices, focusing inquiry, enhancing group communication, and diffusing stressors throughout the two-week expeditions. Pedagogical practices are fluid and succinct, cultivated by unique situations and sites explored while traveling through and camping in multiple states from the Allegheny Plateau to the High Plains. Scientific understanding of Badlands landscape processes combine with captured artistic impressions for unique findings for advanced scholarship. Joint Badlands research has been presented in peer-reviewed papers, conferences, lectures, symposia, workshops, as well as solo and group art exhibitions. Geologists and geoscientists have improved their observational, drawing, and photographic skills, in turn, enhancing field notebooks and scientific storytelling abilities. Geological processes have inspired artists to creatively utilize various media and techniques to convey a deeper understanding of the Earth and the passage of time. Participants through the years have created landscape-inspired artworks in such media as photography, painting, sculpture, video, performance, and fiber art. Some have also utilized soils, sediments, and rocks for creating artworks in ceramics, drawing, and metalsmithing. Visual data collection is enhanced and creative approaches to scientific inquiry are fostered. Everyone participates in interdisciplinary explorations, and successful results often become incorporated into pedagogical approaches back in the classroom on campus.