Growing Destinations
Your go-to source for insightful discussions on destination development. The Growing Destinations podcast delves into the strategies, challenges, and successes that drive community growth. Each episode features in-depth conversations with local and national experts, uncovering universal themes and innovative practices that can be applied to any city or region.
Growing Destinations
Michael Mick Meilahn: Artist in the Cornfield
Michael (Mick) Meilahn is a third-generation farmer and nationally recognized glass artist whose immersive installation, Primordial Shift, is now on view at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Mick’s work is visually stunning: towering glass ears of corn, cast bronze leaves, surrounded by a video backdrop of fields, but it also asks deeper questions about genetic modification, the evolution of farming, and our relationship with the land.
From his roots in rural Wisconsin to the international world of glassmaking, Mick has spent decades blending the precision of agriculture with the expression of contemporary art. Mick shares more about his journey, what corn means to him as both a crop and a symbol, and why he's inviting all of us to think more critically about how our food is grown.
The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
Speaker 2:In reality, really good art is art that has some kind of underlying meaning. Making art is very much about making something you understand.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Von Bank. Today we're exploring a powerful intersection of art, agriculture and identity right here in the heart of the Midwest. Our guest is Michael McMilan, a third-generation farmer and nationally recognized glass artist, whose immersive installation Primordial Shift is now on view at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, minnesota.
Speaker 1:Mick's work is visually stunning towering glass ears of corn, cast bronze leaves, surrounded by a video backdrop of fields. But it also asks deeper questions about genetic modification, the evolution of farming and our relationship with the land. From his roots in rural Wisconsin to the international world of glassmaking, mick has spent decades blending the precision of agriculture with the expression of contemporary art. We talk with him about the journey, what corn means to him as both a crop and a symbol, why he's inviting all of us to think more critically how our food is grown. Michael McMilan, welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, thank you. You grew up on a family farm in Wisconsin. How did glass art enter the picture for you?
Speaker 2:Like any farm kid, we had lots of freedom on the farm and it was a matter of as a kid, you know, exploring everything in front of us and it has led me to eventually. I went to college and I decided, obviously I started in agriculture and I'm at the campus in River Falls, wisconsin, of course, right next to Minnesota, and that's a big ag school. But I made a shortcut through the art department one day heading for class and then they were throwing pots. I made a shortcut through the art department one day heading for class and then they were throwing pots and it was kind of there where I saw the dirt, the mud, and I just immediately responded to it.
Speaker 2:A couple of years later I went a quarter abroad.
Speaker 2:I changed my major to art and went to Europe and studied with Erwin Eich, who was a very well-known artist, who's a very well-known artist.
Speaker 2:He was an expressionist, for sure, and a contemporary in kind of the boroughs in Munich. It's like the same thing was happening in New York City. We had the same kind of thing happening in New York and it was a hot time, it was a time of change, and I went to Europe to study in study glass and after I got back from college, I went into the Peace Corps and I worked with the Native Americans in Bolivia. So these are all kind of core instances in my life which led me eventually to make work about farming, and when I decided to come back to the farm was a matter of matter of I wanted my family to grow up with, to have the freedoms that I had as as far as space a lot of acreage well, at that time, my, my sister and husband were farming with my dad, and when I came back to the farm, I eventually worked my way into being a full partner with my sister and her husband, and at that time I was making more decorative work.
Speaker 2:It was blowing glass and making things that were quote unquote pretty and decorative. Did you view it as a hobby? Back then it was never considered a hobby because I was offered to teach in California and at San Jose and I turned that down because I knew that I would never return to the farm if I went out there, so your roots were always in farming.
Speaker 2:They weren't until I got to be about 25. I started to realize that, you know, there's a lot to be offered in the rural community. And so when I did come back from, I finished my undergraduate and then I went to graduate school in ISU, illinois State University, at Normal, and that's where I got my MFA. So that's when I decided to return to farm with my family and that's when I was starting to make the transition from graduate work. You have to remember that glass did not come into play in the crafts until 1964. And that's the first class that came out of Madison where glass was being offered at the college level. I studied with one of the very early students. So we were all collectively, professors and graduate students, talking to one another, asking how do we do things, because it was all new to everyone. And so that real base, you know, started a small organization called the Glass Arts Society, which has led to from a handful of very interested artists and professors. It has grown to over 10,000 or more worldwide members.
Speaker 1:How did you balance at that time bringing your family to the farm? How did you balance farming and art?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a cast-grain farm so it wasn't a matter of having animals that you had to feed daily. So what I did is it just kind of fell into place where I had basically four seasons planting the midsummer, where I was selling my artwork, and then harvest, and then of course the last part of that was making the work in the wintertime, and of course, both farming and making glass we need assistance. So I was able to keep an employee all year long. So a lot of the glass making that I did, even then it required more than one person. So the bigger stuff that I make now, you know, requires four people. The mass, just the very mass of what I make just requires a lot more effort.
Speaker 1:What inspired you to start exploring corn as a central theme in your artwork?
Speaker 2:I started to make decorative work or work that was quote-unquote more acceptable and in reality really good art is art that has some kind of underlying meaning. Making art is very much about making something you understand, and it was in 1995 that I planted my first modified seed. And it was at that very moment when I said you know, I've got to make something about my life as a farmer, and corn, of course we were growing 1,000 acres a year. It is what I know and, true to writing good writers, they write about what they know. And so I started making corn, just to get started with it, and I made a piece called minefield, which were very large, two-foot large balls with ears of corn sticking out, so they looked like a mine. But I hung them next to the floor on bungee cords and then you start bouncing them and pushing them. Pretty soon they break. And then you start bouncing them and pushing them, pretty soon they break.
Speaker 2:If you get the whole idea of the minefield, was this idea that this is an explosive issue? At that time in 1995, there were riots in Berkeley about the Franken-Korn Frankensteins, so timing was absolutely perfect for that particular piece. But I didn't want to come from it started realizing that it was too negative and that's not really what I was after. The concept here was simply that this is just hey, look, wake up people. This is a big deal and it's a part of science. Get used to it. And I'm very pro genetic modification. Don't get the wrong idea Simply because of what it's done for me. Personally, I can see the good sides of it.
Speaker 1:You have this incredible exhibit, primordial shift, on display at Rochester Arts Center through the summer. You've called it a reflection on change. What kind of change are you hoping people consider when they experience this piece?
Speaker 2:well, first of all, I also understand that Chaz Oldenburg is, you know, a Minnesota, very well-known artist worldwide and his whole concept was to take small objects and make them big, because we're not accustomed to seeing, for example, a little light socket, you know, 12 feet in scale when you walk in. It's a shock. So the shock value is part of it. But I want people to think about, well, what does this really mean? I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad for you as an individual. I want you to look at the pieces, because they're big. Why we have to realize that you know production worldwide. We are not the leading producer of corn any longer. Brazil has passed us up in beans and corn simply because it's you know. They have thousands of acres they're going to put under production. We're competing very directly, in a political way, with China.
Speaker 1:How does your life as a farmer shape the way you approach your art, and maybe vice versa?
Speaker 2:Has life as a farmer shaped the way you approach your art and maybe vice versa. It's definitely changed my perspective on American production because we were the leading producer, but we are living today in a global interaction, with our natural resources being sucked up in many different ways.
Speaker 1:How do you hope people from a region like Rochester, so connected to farming, will respond to the exhibit Farmers?
Speaker 2:respond to it they don't see well. First of all, we have to understand that farmers are not likely to buy art or to maybe understand conceptual art, simply because it's our personality as farmers, as farmers At the same time. Art collectors don't really respond that well to that particular visual object either, simply because of the political negativity that surrounds it. But I just want people to look at it and perceive it. On a lot of the large years of corn there are numbers or there's different objects on it, symbols. There's a dice. I use a dice in a lot of my work. It's a roll of the dice. Farming is it's a roll of dice to make art. Every time you open a door, I mean we take chance with our own lives. So it's at the same time I want people to understand it's everything is based on science. If we don't use science and take it forward to the next step, other countries will.
Speaker 1:Was there a moment in your career when farming and art truly merged into one expression for you?
Speaker 2:Yep, it was in 95 when I planted my first genetically modified seed. Suddenly I had a greater interest in presenting larger work, and making the bronze lateral leaves is one way of thinking about farming vertically, for example. In the future we're going to have a lot of vertical farming. It's going to be a very important part of our food source and to that extent, to the extreme China has a complex with. They raised like 3 million hogs in one up 90-story building. The complexity of that kind of concept farmers need to think about big time.
Speaker 1:What was most challenging about bringing Primordial Shift to life at the Rochester Arts Center.
Speaker 2:Every single museum I've had this piece in, the configuration is different and the whole idea of making the piece in the first place by using modular construction 30 of these and 30 of these, and then put these pieces all together in 30 more pieces to make one piece projectors the idea is just to show people what is possible through aesthetics.
Speaker 1:Corn is such a symbol in Midwestern culture. In Rochester here we have a big corn tower that was part of a food plant at one point. Do you see corn as a metaphor for something larger?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean for me it's again, it's my work represents something larger because when you see it and you see what the projectors are doing onto the wall, the objects themselves throw a larger because of the position of the, of the projectors at 30 feet away or, say, 15 feet away, shooting through the work Suddenly the ears are, say, 4 feet tall, but the shadows they present on the wall are 8 feet. So you have this interaction.
Speaker 1:It is a very large part of contemporary thought and contemporary farming as far as that goes, as technology and agriculture advances, what do you think we risk losing if we don't reflect on where it all started?
Speaker 2:AI is coming at us pretty fast and going back to the minefield. That was kind of what I was saying. Where are we going to go? That was 30 years ago and I was questioning where is science going to take us? We must follow science, but here we are at a point in history of human history where things are going to change and we're not going to know. It's going to be more difficult to find out the real truth and the real science.
Speaker 1:Looking ahead, are there other subjects or themes you're excited to explore through your art?
Speaker 2:I think the art takes on greater meaning as I understand what's going on in the world as a collective human energy and source, because my works, I feel like, has new meaning every day when I look at it, because I'm listening to the news and I look at it a little bit like I have. Sand is about 65 percent of glass and I farm and I make use the dirt to provide the physicality of our, of our life, our physical being. The other part is a material that has it, this juicy, lush material that can do anything. It's pretty but at the same time it can be used as extremely fragile. So that's why I did a lecture called Sand and Dirt.
Speaker 1:Michael McMillan, your exhibit is awesome. I encourage people to come and see it at the Rochester Art Center. It's been great to learn more about the intersection of agriculture and art from your perspective. Thank you for being our guest on the Growing Destinations podcast. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for tuning in to the Growing Destinations podcast and don't forget to subscribe. This podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester Find out more about Rochester, minnesota, and its growing arts and culture scene, its international culinary flavors and award rochester find out more about rochester, minnesota, and its growing arts and culture scene, its
