Project Overview
On July 25, 2026, we celebrated the recovery of Long Lake, a shallow water lake that has moved from an F grade to a B+ over the past decade. Long Lake, historically turbid and impaired by excess nutrients, is healing—quietly, steadily, through resilience and stewardship. We hope you will spend some time with us surrounding its waters, exploring the ecology of water, plant, biome, and our relationship therein. Together with the communities around the Lake, the city of Stillwater, and our Brown’s Creek Watershed biologists and leaders, three artists activated the space around Long Lake and invited community members to see their watershed with new eyes.
Meet the Artists & Biologist
Plants, Paper, and Printmaking | Jimmy Marty and
Jennifer Awes Freeman
Jimmy Marty is a watershed biologist with Emmons and Olivier Resources (EOR). He spends much of his time surveying the water resources in the Brown's Creek Watershed and beyond. Jimmy is particularly interested in aquatic plants and has found unique ones in the area, including Long Lake.
Jennifer Awes Freeman is a multimedia artist, educator, and scholar whose work explores ritual, materiality, gender, and history. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Minnesota, Connecticut, and Tennessee. She serves as Director of the Gallery and Collection at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis and teaches medieval art history at the University of Minnesota. Her recent publications include The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power (2021) and The Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts: The Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (2022). Follow Jennifer’s work: @awesfreeman
With Jimmy nearby to share plant samples and stories, Jennifer led Plants, Paper, and Printmaking, a hands-on activity exploring Long Lake’s aquatic ecology through printmaking. Participants experimented with linocut stamps featuring native aquatic plants such as pondweed and white water-lily.
Watershed Puppets | Playdoh Kolo
Playdoh Kolo is a New Orleans-based puppeteer and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores found materials, water ecologies, and participatory performance. Their practice transforms discarded and natural materials into sculptural and animated forms that examine relationships between people, landscapes, and systems of accumulation. They are the creator of Riperion, an ongoing puppet performance project rooted in the Mississippi River and Gulf South waterways, where salvaged objects become “Piano Creatures” navigating shifting floodplain environments. Kolo’s work emphasizes accessibility, collaboration, and site-responsive making, inviting communities to actively participate in the creation and activation of the work.
For Still Water, Living Lake, Playdoh led Watershed Puppets, a drop-in workshop where participants created small “lake beings” using natural and reclaimed materials. Drawing inspiration from the ecology of Long Lake, participants assembled puppets from found materials and brought them to life through collaborative play, creating scenes, characters, and stories that reflected the living systems and shared imagination of the watershed.
Sharon Mansur | tracings: a creative walk along Long Lake
Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and community engager based in Winona, Minnesota, on Dakota homelands. A facilitator of movement, people, spaces, and imaginations, her creative practice integrates dance, improvisation, somatics, visual installations, film, and site-responsive projects that have been shared throughout the United States and internationally. In 2023, she initiated tracings, an ongoing creative walking project that explores walking as an artistic and embodied practice. Sharon also facilitates The Cedar Tree Project, presenting Arab/SWANA contemporary artists, and SHIFT~, a series of experimental performance salons.
For Still Water, Living Lake, Sharon led tracings: a creative walk along Long Lake, a series of small-group experiences inviting participants to slow down and connect with the natural environment through movement, observation, mindfulness, and creative writing. This gentle, approximately 0.3-mile walk followed a flat wooded path along the lake, with pauses to engage the body, imagination, and landscape through guided prompts and moments of reflection. Suitable for walkers of all levels, the experience offered an opportunity to cultivate curiosity, wonder, and a deeper appreciation for this unique place within our community.
Learn more at www.mansurdance.com or follow Sharon on Instagram @mansurdancer and Facebook at Sharon Mansur.