Fowler Project Combines Illinois History with Wetland Studies and Sculpture
By Steve Tamari
Professor Laura Milsk Fowler, PhD, is not new to the interdisciplinary, student-engaged, community-oriented interests of the 21st century teacher-scholar. She came to SIUE in 2003 with degrees in public and american history to run the museum studies program.
“Since the program is a graduate postbaccalaureate certificate, it’s hard to engage many undergrads in the program and its activities," said Dr. Fowler.
Undeterred in a quest to involve undergraduates, she turned to SIUE’s landmark Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) program which, enables undergraduates to engage in individualized, mentored academic projects.
“URCA allows me to have a relationship with undergraduate students and community programs that would normally be reserved for graduate students," Dr. Fowler explained. "Some of the places graduate students have worked include the Edwardsville Arts Center, the Fuller Dome, the Schmidt Art Center (at Southwestern Illinois College) and other sites on campus, especially in Lovejoy Library. The previous URCA student helped craft an exhibit and programming at the Meridian Village Retirement Home in Glen Carbon.”
Dr. Fowler’s latest URCA project combines Illinois History, Environmental Studies, Geography and Art in new and exciting ways. In association with Alton-based sculptor Libby Reuter, Fowler and her undergraduate assistant will document the effects of the early 20th century decision by Chicago leaders to reverse the flow of the Chicago River effectively sending its sewage downstream with adverse consequences for points south including the southwestern parts of the state.
After her retirement as executive director of the Schmidt Art Center at SWIC in 2012, Reuter began building found-glass sculptures for a cooperative venture with St. Louis photographer Joshua Rowan titled “Watershed Cairns.” Cairns are typically mounds of stones built as a memorial. Reuter and Rowan have used the concept and photographs of Reuter’s glass sculptures placed at over 400 sites along the Mississippi-Missouri basin.
According to their website, “The cairns mark the watersheds metaphorically as fragile, beautiful and deeply connected to everyday life. The large- scale, color photographs vividly bring to life the locale and intimately reveal the connections of the people and communities to their local watershed.”
Where does Illinois history fit into the environmental and community-based aspects of these artists’ project? Dr. Fowler will direct her URCA assistant in using the digital resources of the Chicago History Museum, the Library of Congress, local historical societies and the Illinois State Museum to compile a database of available resources on the history and environmental impact on downstate Illinois of reversing of the course of the Chicago River. The completed database will include historical photographs, newspaper articles, books, and place glass negatives about the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers from 1890-1910. These materials will, in turn, form the basis of a mobile art exhibit called “Reversing Course” to be displayed along the route of the rivers by watershedcairns.com and then become available for future researchers to use.
Dr. Fowler says the project will expose two perspectives, those of Chicago and of towns downriver. In Chicago, the dominant perspective was a celebration of “the course reversal as an engineering marvel which demonstrated the city’s ability to control nature at a time in U.S. history when there was a focus on technological innovation.” On the other hand, “little attention has been paid to what happened to communities downriver affected by the flow of waste and unnatural flooding.” Though this project zeroes in on the time at which the course reversal took place and how communities in our region responded in the moment, it “highlights the continuing divide between Chicago and the rest of Illinois.”
