“Kinship of Rivers: We Are One Family” a 4Ground Land Art Installation
Kinstone is one of 15+ sites that are participating in the 4 Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial 2022 — a far-reaching arts initiative and land art event spanning four states and tribal lands of the Upper Midwest. 4Ground is designed to raise awareness around important land and water issues affecting the region while celebrating the art, land and history of the rural Midwest and boosting tourism of the region through suggested road trips to experience site-specific land art. This art festival will be held from June 1 throughout the summer. For more information on the many sites and artists involved throughout the region, please visit the festival home page here: 4Ground Biennial.
Kinstone will host artists Wang Ping and Joe Lerro and their installation called “Kinship of Rivers: We Are One Family”
Kinship of Rivers: We Are One Family is an interactive installation celebrating our connections with land, air, water, and communities. Visit and participate in “Growing Family,” a reclaimed black locust, cedar, and bamboo structure hosting beans and prayer flags of art and poetry made by visitors, symbolizing growth, vitality and harmony. Black locust and beans, both in the Leguminosae family, fix and store nitrogen in the soil. The project grows with seasons: building the structure and installing flags and sowing beans in spring; celebrating the blossoms, shade and fruit of the beans, art and poetry in summer; harvesting seeds and flags in autumn to continue the cycle of life and our hope for peace.
JOIN US all season long to view and participate in this amazing project at Kinstone. Also, mark your calendars and plan to attend three special celebration days for this art installation; click on the following links for more information on each:
May 2: Kinstone Kin-Day 2022 – Introducing Kinship of Rivers project coming to Kinstone
June 21: Opening Celebration for Kinship of Rivers: We Are One Family – a 4Ground Land Art project
September 22: Closing Celebration of Kinship of Rivers: We Are One Family – a 4Ground Land Art project
Started in 2012, Kinship of Rivers brings communities, rivers and lands together through prayer flags of art, poetry and prints. Over 5000 prayer flags have been made along the Mississippi, Yangtze, Amazon, Ganges, and Nile Rivers, Mounts Everest and Kilimanjaro, and all continents. Joe Lerro worked with Wang Ping for two exhibitions at the Soap Factory and as they traveled across Africa from Zimbabwe, Zambia to Tanzania, from Victoria Falls to Kilimanjaro and the Nile.
Thousands of these world-rich prayer flags will be displayed on three (3) special event days at Kinstone, carrying messages of unity from the Yangtze, Amazon, Ganges, and Nile Rivers, Mounts Everest, Kilimanjaro and other sacred places. See them at Kinstone on May 2 at our Spring Opening, June 21 during Summer Solstice events, and September 22 during Autumnal Equinox events.
This project thrives and grows with the participation of the community. Visitors to Kinstone can make prayer flags during events or anytime at the open art station in our Education Center. Each flag made is an artful pledge to promote peace and protect air, soil and water. The flags made by Kinstone visitors will be displayed on the Growing Family structure through September. As the season draws to a close, they will then join the world prayer flags as they roam the globe, broadcasting peace and unity from our Kinstone community out to the ends of the earth and beyond – like a pebble in a pond they will ripple forth.
Wang Ping (she/her/hers) was born in Shanghai, China and came to the USA in 1985. A poet, writer, photographer, installation artist, and founder / director of Kinship of Rivers project; her multimedia exhibitions include “Kinship of Rivers: We Are Water,” “Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges,” and hundreds of installation exhibitions at schools, colleges, galleries, museums, lock and dams, and river confluences worldwide, including interactive installations at Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro. She has authored 15 award winning books of poetry, prose and translations. Her awards include the Minnesota Book Award, Eugene Kagen and Asian American Studies awards. She is Professor Emerita of English at Macalester College. She is recipient of NEA, Bush Artist Fellowship for poetry, McKnight Fellowship and Lannan Foundation Residency, Vermont Studio Art and others. She received the Distinct Immigrant Award in 2014, Venezuela International Poet of Honor in 2015, and is the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s Minnesota Beat Poet Laureate 2021-2023. Read more: wangping.com, kinshipofrivers.org, behindthegateexhibit.wangping.com.
Joseph (Joe) Lerro (he/him/his) was born in Pitman, NJ. Joe’s artistic works have focused on poetry, stories, painting and landscape art. After graduation from the University of Minnesota, Joe lived in a subsistence farming community in Northern Province, Zambia while in the Peace Corps. He was a recent Resident Artist at Mildred’s Lane, an artist community in Beach Lake, PA. His works were exhibited along with others in the SILVER–IRON–LIGHT exhibition in Narrowsburg, NY (2021). Land stewardship and reinforcing the relationship between humans and the landscape have become the framework for Joe’s art.
Joe Lerro and Wang Ping collaborated in 2019 for the Kinship of Rivers project, carrying thousands of flags as peace messengers across East Africa to Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River.
The 4 Ground Midwest Land Art Biennial 2022 event is sponsored by Franconia Sculpture Park in Schafer, Minnesota in partnership with Arts Midwest and International Sculpture Center.
