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Special Events

In addition to field trips, the Festival of Nature hosts a variety of social, immersive experiences. Keep scrolling to learn more about this years events. 

Festival Keynote Dinner

Friday, May 23, 4:30 PM

Location: About Thyme Farm, 8425 County F, Baileys Harbor

Fee: $40 per person

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Schedule

Reception & Beverage Service: 4:30 pm

Dinner: 5:00 pm

Enjoy a delectable family style dinner prepared by Thyme Catering!

Welcome and General Announcements: 6:15 pm

Keynote Presentation: 6:30 pm

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Limit: 185

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Reserve your spot by May 9, 2025

Keynote Presentation

FieldNotes 

The Ridges is excited to present Rachel Davis and Andrew Hipp as the 2025 Festival of Nature keynote speakers.


Rachel and Andrew have been collaborating formally as an artist (RD) and a writer (AH) for more than 20 years. They have published two books—Field Guide to Wisconsin Sedges and Oak Origins: From Acorns to Species and the Tree of Life—and several illustrated natural essays together. They are currently working on a series of paintings and essays based on the lakes of Northern Wisconsin, supported by a multiyear residency through the Drawing Water Program at UW Madison’s Trout Lake Station.


Rachel and Andrew collaborate at the interface between art, literature, science, and natural history. Their work is in part documentation, seeing and recording what the natural world presents, then sharing it in their own ways. However, their collaboration moves beyond documentation and delineation. It also informs their individual work in art, education, and science. For Andrew, writing mediates between subjects of inquiry—a weevil escaping from an acorn, an early-emerging false rue anemone—and the processes that connect individual organisms. Sentences convey information, but they also give form to understanding. The writing complements his work as a researcher and herbarium curator. For Rachel, photographing plants, fungi and insects is a first step to discovering the formal in the natural. Painting, drawing, natural dyes, and printmaking are ways to distill the shapes of plants, the light reflected off the water, mosses seen through a magnifying lens, and lichens into patterns. The rearrangement of shapes from the landscape with colors found in nature engages and feeds her as an artist and as a teacher.
 

Field Notes will illustrate how Rachel and Andrew’s collaboration both reveals and exists in parallel with the natural world, while presenting their understanding of how integrating art, science, and natural history have changed their respective practices.

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Aquatic Plant painting by Rachel D. Davis

Rachel D. Davis

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Andrew L. Hipp

Rachel D. Davis

Rachel received her B.A. from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 1992 and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997. Rachel’s paintings and prints have been exhibited in national venues including the Holter Museum of Fine Art in Helena, Montana; Evergreen Galleries in Olympia, Washington; the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in Madison, Wisconsin; and Project: Artspace in New York City, New York. Rachel works out of her home studio in Downers Grove and teaches natural dye classes at the Morton Arboretum and Lillstreet Art Center.

Andrew L. Hipp

Andrew received his B.A. in English and his Ph.D. in botany from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994 and 2004, respectively. Andrew’s scientific work on the evolution of plant diversity appears in a wide range of scholarly journals, and his creative work has been published in Arnoldia, Places Journal, International Oaks, Places Journal, and Scientific American. Andrew is the Director of the Herbarium and Plant Systematist at The Morton Arboretum and a lecturer at The University of Chicago.

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Art Exhibit and
Artist Reception

opening Thursday, may 22
Artist reception, 4:00 - 6:00 pm

Painting & Poems from the ridges
Works by Jeff Kunkel and Mary Elyn Bahlert

This exhibition features plein-air oil paintings by Jeff Kunkel and poems written by Mary Elyn Bahlert. Jeff and Mary Elyn are husband and wife. Both were born and raised in Wisconsin, and both are lifetime members of The Ridges. They now live in Oakland, California and return to The Ridges often. The works on display have been composed on site and will grow over the next few seasons.
 

These works, in word and image, are personal responses to their favorite places in The Ridges and are offered in the hope that they might help you deepen your relationship to this unique landscape.

Painting, Jeff Kunkel

The exhibit will be on display beginning Thursday, May 22 at the Cook-Albert Fuller Nature Center and will remain on display for the summer. Pieces will be added to the exhibition throughout Memorial Day Weekend while artist Jeff Kunkel paints in the Sanctuary during the Festival of Nature. Artwork will be for sale, and all proceeds will support The Ridges Sanctuary’s mission.

Jeff Kunkel

Jeff attended California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. He paints in oils in a style called plein air, which means outside, in the wind and sun and changing light. He paints loosely and quickly and completes a painting in one session. Not long ago, he was a Visiting Artist at the Cedarburg Bog near Cedarburg, Wisconsin. He is also an accomplished writer and has written two short collections of Wisconsin stories: Warming Fires and Bless Ewe. You can see his many books and paintings at jeffkunkel.org.

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Mary Elyn is an intuitive poet who evokes images and feeling through her poetry. Her love of poetry and literature began as a child, and she can still recite from memory many well-known poems which she learned in Miss Ross’s English class at Peckham Junior High School in Milwaukee. She cannot attend a Christmas gathering without reciting, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. See her work at thewisdomyears.org.

Artist, Jeff Kunkel

Keep your eye out throughout Memorial Day Weekend to see Jeff Kunkel painting at various locations in the Sanctuary. Schedule, location, and information will be available at the front desk of the Cook-Albert Fuller Nature Center.

ABOUT US >

The Door County Festival of Nature has been brought to you by The Ridges Sanctuary and our partners in conservation to celebrate the natural beauty of the Door Peninsula. Each year we bring forward a slate of field trips, events and experiences to help you explore that unique natural systems found throughout Door County. 

2025 FESTIVAL BROCHURE >

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CONTACT >

T: 920-839-2802

E: info@ridgessanctuary.org

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8166 Highway 57, 

Baileys Harbor, WI 54202

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