Marguerite Koepke sees her work as a journey, a work in progress. She believes that her design has been informed by the culture and nature of “place,” and no landscape or region has formed a more powerful impression than her native Iowa. Her love of being outdoors and growing up in the Midwest along the Mississippi River formed the early inspirations for her art, design and pursuit of landscape architecture. Extensive travel has continued to imprint her art and career as a teacher and practitioner.
Koepke’s exhibition Imprints: investigations in design portrays the artistic journey from sketch to design through a progression of entries beginning with journal drawings and sketches, progressing through media explorations, design doodles and process graphics and ending with completed works. The exhibition is on display through March 31 in the College of Environment and Design. An opening reception will be held March 8 from 4-6 p.m. in Circle Gallery,
G14 Caldwell Hall.
For the past 22 years Koepke has taught design and planting design at UGA. Before moving to the South, she taught in the landscape architecture program at Kansas State University. Prior to her academic career, she practiced landscape architecture in the private and public sectors including work in Hawaii, Iowa, Missouri, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wyoming and Colorado. Her broad regional experiences and explorations in a varied range of landscapes and eco-systems has also profoundly informed and influenced her work.
Koepke dedicates Imprints to the more than 2,500 students she has interacted with during her 30 years of teaching in the design studio.
“My students have supplied a creative venue and the all-important ‘new eyes’ with which to see, explore and experience the landscape and have afforded an endless source of ideas and inspirations,” she says. “This exhibition is an attempt to share a small measure of that inspiration and to convey my love of landscape, passion for drawing and the design process as journey.”
