Loess Hills Overlook

Artist / Maker Dennis L. Dykema (American, b. 1940)

Date1993

OriginUSA

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions47 x 58 in. (119.4 x 147.3 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with acquisition funds from Robert and Estyl Wright Estate and Margaret DeSonier. In the permanent collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object numberU96.14

Status

On view

Collections

Label TextIn 1994, the University Museums invited artists to participate in Land of the Fragile Giants: Landscapes, Environments, and Peoples of the Loess Hills, an exhibition exploring a unique geological and aesthetic site in western Iowa. Deep deposits of loess, a wind-deposited soil, such as those that form western Iowa’s hills, are extremely uncommon, and are found only elsewhere along the Rhine Valley in Germany and the Yellow River in China. As a result of the exhibition, the University Museums, which actively collects significant Iowa artists, secured twelve works of art depicting the Loess Hills. This painting became one of the signature works for the exhibition which traveled to Cambodia, Swaziland and Washington, D.C. Dykema’s use of color in Loess Hills Overlook combined with dramatic brush strokes convey a feeling of energy and perpetual motion. As a landscape, the Loess Hills are naturally teeming with life and transformation. Forces, both natural and human, are at work in the fragile environment with consequences that can be difficult to rationalize. Loess Hills Overlook captures the paradox of the environment as a place where seemingly opposing entities are attempting to strike a balance—forest and prairie, wind and soil, human and nature. This work of art, and others in the exhibition, were a commission by University Museums in the 1990s of Iowa artists challenged to visually explore a unique landform of western Iowa, the Loess Hills. This painting was inspired by Murray Hill, the highest point of the Loess Hills, located in Harrison County. (The following from "Subject to Change" exhibit) Dennis Dykema (American, b. 1940) Loess Hills Overlook, 1993 Oil on canvas Purchased with acquisition funds from Robert and Estyl Wright Estate and Margaret DeSonier. In the permanent collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. U96.14 Western Iowa's loess hills are a fragile ecosystem. Rising over 300 feet, Murray Hill is the tallest of the loess hills and overlooks the Missouri River valley. Covered with prairie grasses that hold the fragile soil in place, Murray Hill also is a pasture, fenced in to contain grazing cattle, which are themselves a threat to the highly erodible soil. With the loess hills landforms being so fragile and so rare on the planet, should this geographic area be further considered, protected and sustained as a National Park?

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