Heaven on Earth

Katie McVea’s “land art” explores ethical human interaction with nature in the Tunica Hills

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On this late summer day, the beautyberries called.

Over the course of the previous months spent allowing the Tunica Hills to guide her inspiration, environmental artist Katie McVea had been drawn to the smooth horsetail growing in clumps, to the smooth white river rocks found along the banks of Polly Creek, to the ferns feathering delicately over the path, and the golden leaves carpeting the forest floor.

But today, driving through her family’s property on her four-wheeler, it was the impossibly-hued droplets bursting through the woods that caught her eye. She pulled over, and set to gathering, and gathering, and gathering. When she had more than she could carry, the bushes in their abundance barely registering what was taken, McVea pointed herself towards that spot, that tree—the one she remembered from some previous trip, that was covered like fur in the most magical emerald moss. When she found it, she poured her bounty into the waiting arms of its roots. The pile she left there was bright and bulbous, clanging against the textured green of the tree in a way that was magical in its almost unnaturalness. Only a human could have put this here, but the forest could still claim it.

The next day, when McVea returned, the berries had vanished, devoured by some lucky white-tail. It was as though she had never placed them there at all.

A collection of these ephemeral Tunica sculptures, photographed, makes up McVea’s thesis as an MFA student at Louisiana State University’s College of Art & Design. In the vein of the “Land Art” movement of the 1960s and ‘70s—the project joins her affinity for design with her environmentalist foundations in a creative tribute to her home.

The pile she left there was bright and bulbous, clanging against the textured green of the tree in a way that was magical in its almost unnaturalness. Only a human could have put this here, but the forest could still claim it.

Raised in St. Francisville, exploring West Feliciana’s swimming holes, riding four-wheelers down the slopes of the Tunica Hills and searching for arrowheads in the creek bottom, McVea understood from an early age that this was a special place. “My dad loves West Feliciana Parish,” she said. “He thinks it’s Heaven on Earth, and he and my mom really passed that down to us.”

Even after spending seventeen years in Dallas—working as an art director and graphic designer with brands like Tropicana, Gatorade, and Frito-Lay—she still told people she was from West Feliciana Parish. “I always felt that tug,” she said.

[Read Jordan LaHaye Fontenot's profile on biologist and artist Brandon Ballangée's work here.]

After moving back to pursue an MFA at LSU, she briefly found herself living with her parents again after an issue with her apartment. “I was really back in the country,” she said, describing how she started taking regular walks around the 400-acre woodland property of her childhood, and how that started to impact her work as an artist. “I went from kind of creating other people’s work, to creating work for myself.”

She started to more intensely understand this “heaven on earth” as a rare and precious thing, something worth protecting. “The Tunica Hills are so unique,” she said, marveling at the landscape’s geological history—its signature slopes and ridges created during the Ice Age when dust storms carried highly-erodible, hardwood-friendly loess in massive drifts to the region. The topography and ecology that have resulted are unlike anywhere else in Louisiana. “It’s like you’re completely transported.”

One of the major components of the early “land art” movement, along with ephemerality, was its rejection of art’s commodification; by centering their creative practice and products outside of the institutions of traditional galleries and museums, artists like Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson challenged the idea of art as something to be purchased and sold and used in the market.

“The Tunica Hills are so unique...It’s like you’re completely transported.” —Katie McVea

Into this discourse McVea inserts her own challenge: what is lost when land and nature is viewed as a commodity, rather than a gift?  “Shouldn’t we all get on board to preserve places like this?” she asks. In creating art that uplifts the wonder of nature alongside human creativity, in a manner that avoids taking or disrupting—she presents a model for mankind’s interaction with our natural environments, reflective of her parents’ decision to place their four hundred acres into a conservation easement. “I definitely have found more appreciation at this point in my life for how important of a decision that was for my parents,” she said. “The land cannot be divided, cannot be clear cut, cannot be developed.”

But it goes beyond simply letting nature be, she said. There is an active role humans can play in protecting these places. “We have to maintain the trail systems, make sure invasive species that could damage the area are removed. We have to be there and see and manage and maintain. It’s a lot of responsibility.”

McVea said that she sees her work not as a screaming call to action, but more of an encouraging whisper. “Look at the land this way,” she said. “Look at the beauty, look at what it has to offer, and how important it is to preserve it.” Look at how we can insert ourselves, create something beautiful within it, and then step back—as though we were never there.

Katie McVea’s thesis work will be on display at LSU’s Glassell Gallery in downtown Baton Rouge from May 2–May 13, 2023, with a reception to be held on May 13 from 6 pm–8 pm.