Featured photo: Stacia Goodman installing the mosaic in Hagg-Sauer Hall. Submitted.
At the close of the spring 2020 semester, Bemidji State University commissioned Minneapolis-based artist Stacia Goodman to install a tile mosaic at the entrance of the new Hagg-Sauer Hall.
After months of hand-cutting thousands of pieces of material, Goodman and her team spent nearly three days unloading, staging and installing the mosaic.
The mosaic, meant to represent life at Bemidji State, is dedicated to the graduating class of 2020 to embody their perseverance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Goodman asked 2020 graduates to submit words they would use to describe their time at BSU and incorporated them into the mosaic.
She also reached out to faculty and staff for campus donations to be used in the mosaic’s construction. Items include hockey sticks, golf clubs, bobbers, fishing poles, coffee cups, canoe paddles and skis.
During her research for this project, Goodman was inspired by the roles that indigenous people have played and continue to play in the Bemidji region. Through this inspiration, she sought words and artifacts to include in the mosaic that reflected Bemidji State’s place on traditional Ojibwe and Dakota land.
“I hope the mural will delight students and staff every time they walk into the new building,” Goodman said. “But on a deeper level, I want the art to educate people on BSU’s origins and remind them of its hopeful future. Northern Minnesota folks are a resilient bunch.”
