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The art of nature

Des Moines artists begin work on nature center murals

By Kelby Wingert 5 min read

With the exterior work on the River's Edge Discovery Center mostly complete, the focus is now on finishing up the interior and preparing the space for an array of exhibits highlighting Iowa's water resources.

But before the exhibits, which were bid to Taylor Studios of Rantoul, Illinois, for $1.7 million, can be installed, the walls need to be painted. In planning the nature center project, Webster County Conservation Director Matt Cosgrove wanted to use every surface to really celebrate the water theme.

Snaking across the floor is a river made of blue materials. On one wall is a diagram of the layers of soil and rock in the ground. Another wall has the beginnings of a fluffy cloud full of rain. Everywhere else, there are sketches and pencil lines that hint at what's coming next.

Des Moines artists Kathleen Joy Roling and Laura Todd are about a week into the process of painting a massive mural on the walls of the main exhibit space of the nature center.

Their colorful design gives a glimpse of lakes, ponds and streams, and the flora and fauna that rely on those water sources to thrive.

"[Webster County Conservation] showed us what they wanted, but then we put our style into it," Roling said.

The two artists began work on the mural last week. Using a video projector and a scissor lift, they started with sketching the outline of the design on the walls. Once they finished with that, they began filling in the color.

"It's more efficient to just work on getting our outlines on and making it to painting later because we only have the lifts for so long," Todd said.

This was also their first time using scissor lifts to reach the top of the walls.

"That took a little bit of practice at first and a lot of bravery," Roling said.

Above one of the windows will be a mural depicting the Des Moines River and Lizard Creek running through Fort Dodge and and under the Karl King and Kenyon Road bridges.

"This one, they'd like to show how the waterways and the streams work with the urban landscape," Todd said.

Above another window will be a mural of a "prairie pothole," a depressional wetland or freshwater marsh.

"I didn't even know what a prairie pothole was until I researched it," Roling said.

Todd and Roling spent a lot of time researching the water cycle, wildlife and aquatic plant life as they designed the mural.

"We have to be accurate," Roling said.

"This really was a job designed well for us because we love nature -- it's our thing," Todd added. "We're nature people."

Collaboration was key to the creation of this mural, Roling said.

"Laura and I are both individual professional artists, but we partner a lot on really big projects," she said. "We're really good friends and we just naturally started assisting each other on mural projects and then we got to the point where we started partnering on really big ones."

"We work really well together," Todd added. "Our styles mesh really well together."

On Wednesday, Roling and Todd were working on painting details on the wall that depicts the underground water cycle.

"There's the specific layers of the earth and when you travel down, it has the different kinds of rock faces that we're trying to simulate to give an accurate depiction," Todd said.

The immensity of the project was something the two artists aren't used to.

"Typically, I'm hired for one mural at a time, not like an entire museum," Roling said.

"This is the biggest project that either of us has ever done, so we're learning a lot and it's really good for our future," Todd added.

Todd and Roling expect to have the murals complete by March 1.

"It's weird to have like five more weeks left because we normally finish within a week, so we're used to having a lot of results really quickly," Roling said. "But because there's so much collaboration going on and communication and a lot of things we have to work around, adapting quickly is a big thing for us."

Todd said they're in talks with Webster County Conservation to possibly paint smaller murals on the walls of the classrooms in the building, but nothing has been decided yet.

The River's Edge Discovery Center on First Street north of Central Avenue is a $6.7 million project of Webster County Conservation. The Nature Center building will be focused on Iowa's water resources. The center exhibit space will feature an array of exhibits on the water cycle, wetlands, glaciers and rivers and streams.

The project is being funded through a $4 million Destination Iowa grant from the state, a $300,000 grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and through private donations,

Cosgrove told the Webster County Board of Supervisors in November that the nature center project is on track to be completed in the spring, with a grand opening sometime in the summer.

Starting at /week.