Site 16 and Site 5, A collaboration between Troy Nickle, Mark Jirsa, The Minnesota Geological Survey and the University of Minnesota

Photograph and artwork by Troy Nickle, geological notes by Mark Jirsa

Site 16
UTM = 62217/5325277  On Birch Lake, side of portage to Carp Lake.
Canada on shore to right (N), image on US side.
Mudstone and slate – here with strong slaty cleavage, pieces of cleaved rock
have been “jumbled” together at different orientations presumably by fault movement.

These are two of sixteen site specific works that were done in collaboration with Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey and the University of Minnesota. The work was initiated through a dialogue between Mark and I about how we could bridge geology with art. Through this project I accompanied Mark in canoe and on a 10km walk near our camp site on the South Arm of Knife lake in The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota to document and map a variety of ancient bedrock crusts throughout the area. The South Arm of Knife Lake was of interest to Mark because there had been a fire there a few years earlier. This meant that much of the moss and lichen that covered these rock outcrops had been burned off, allowing the rock to be easily mapped.

For each site we created a square section approximately 1 meter by 1 meter, to frame different geological events and rock formations with locally found materials like wood, reeds and stones. Each site corresponds to a Universal Transverse Mercator reading. As Mark was taking notes mapping the site I would create the frame in the landscape and document it with close up shots of the rock within the frame and an image of the frame in context to the land.

Site 5

636081E/5328209N

Interlayered white weathered sandstone and mudstone, B = N 10 E / 80 W

T= W

Below is a map of the area and the sites that we mapped and documented.

I express my deep gratitude to The Colorado Art Ranch in collaboration with the Aldo Leopold Institute for allowing me to go on such a great adventure and Mark Jirsa for making coffee every morning, sharing his jolly rancher candy and for his enthusiasm and knowledge of geology.

Windows Through Time - A collaboration between Troy Nickle, Mark Jirsa, the Minnesota Geological Survey and University of Minnesota

Artwork by Troy Nickle

Is time merely a limited linear concept created by mankind so that we can understand the passing of the days, weeks and years?  We seldom think of time on a vast scale encompassing thousands, millions and even billions of years. I wonder what the earth looked like a billion years ago. How has our earth formed and evolved over that period of what we call time? It’s hard to fathom, but I had the opportunity to take a 6 day trip with geologist Mark Jirsa into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, (BWCAW), to gain an understanding of Minnesota’s ancient bedrock crust and had a glimpse of what the earth might have looked like millions of years ago.

Mark focuses on Precambrian geology and studies and maps many of the rock outcrops in the BWCAW and throughout Minnesota to improve our understanding of crustal evolution that spans nearly 3 billion years - (2690 to 2722 Million years). Many of the exposures in the Boundary Waters area provide examples of some of Earth’s oldest and most complex crust. Much of the bedrock in Minnesota is covered by hundreds of feet of glacial sediment, but the bedrock in Superior National Forest which includes the BWCAW is near or at land surface, creating exposures that are sufficiently large and closely spaced allowing it to be mapped in detail.

Photograph by artist Troy Nickle

Mark tells me that he is trying to uncover the geological story behind the formations in the rock. The once flat-lying strata has been folded, metamorphosed (thermally altered), faulted and now stand nearly on end. Like a detective Mark looks at the rock and tries to uncover the story behind it. He looks at the layers measuring the direction with a compass, determining the strike or trend of the layer and if possible the angle the layers recede into the rock, (the dip) and tries to determine which way is up, (the topping) formed by an understanding of the sediments in the layers, and how sediments settle- usually the heavier sediments settle first then the lighter ones later. He takes a UTM (Universe Transverse Mercator) reading of the location and writes a variety of geologist nomenclature on the sediments that formed the rock, the type of rock, fault lines and other information that will help him form detailed maps of the geology. Mark is seriously passionate about his work and it is not hard if you’re near him to soon be consumed with trying to understand and uncover the geological story at how this ancient bedrock might have formed.

Photograph by artist Troy Nickle

It took us 2 days to paddle out to our base camp in the south arm of Knife Lake. There Mark and I developed a collaboration that would bridge geology with art. Mark was really amazing to work with and helped form some of the ideas driving the work.  Through a discussion of where this work could go and how to relate art with geology we decided to frame key areas of rock formations, sediment layers, fault lines and other interesting areas of bedrock as windows looking back into the ancient past. I used locally available materials like stone, wood or reeds to create the frames placed over areas of bedrock and created a frame that was 1 meter square and corresponded to a UTM location.  Mark took notes of the location, the strike, dip, topping, type and age of rock, sediment formations and numerous other details which will be part of the work while I created the frame and took a detailed image of the rock within the frame and an image of where the work exists in context to the land. Each rock formation is like a unique drawing that forms interesting lines and textures telling a story of an ancient world. During one day of mapping we documented 10 sites while hiking through the Knife Lake burn of 2011. We walked through thick brush, fallen trees and endured the high winds, heavy rain and  later were rewarded with a spectacular view.We covered a large area and when we got back to camp made plans to cover other areas on our route back.

Photograph by artist Troy Nickle

Photograph by artist Troy Nickle

Artwork by Troy Nickle

Over time there has been drastic change to the landscape which I learned are traceable through the stone. From continental seas that once covered North America, sediment laden rivers, volcanism, to multiple episodes of tectonic plate collision. It makes me wonder about how we perceive time. Many of these stones seem immovable but were once liquid lava entering an ocean, or sand, mud and silt carried in turbidity currents to eventually settle on an ocean or river floor, overtime forming into solid bedrock then later to be thrust to the surface by a tectonic plate collision.

Photograph by artist Troy Nickle