South Bend Prairie II

This focus exhibition features two works by artist Jake Fernandez. Fernandez visited the University of Notre Dame in 2015 to lecture and to meet with faculty and students within the Department of Art, Art History & Design. While on campus, Fernandez became interested in the Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park at Notre Dame. Specifically, he was intrigued by the prairie-grass.

Fernandez took numerous photographs of prairie grass specimens within the Sculpture Park. Those images were cut and reorganized into a photo collage, which he then utilized as the basis for a drawing. 

Fernandez describes this project, and his larger output, as follows:

This prairie and park have undergone radical changes and this is a composite record of that transformation. My work could be classified as durational as most of it evolves gradually over long periods of time. My interests include a wide range of subjects, from composite renderings of a specific locale, to the graphic telemetry connected to a specific performance, event, condition, or state of mind. My attempt is to channel forms that are ephemeral and in the periphery of our human perception, and through intuition attempt to codify and cypher the mystery of the never-seen. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website