Iowa Art Field showcases site-responsive installation art at alternative spaces in Iowa City.
Iowa Art Field is curated by Iowa City artist Nicholas Cladis and Japanese artist Sugimoto Hiroshi; both will be contributing artworks to the program. Cladis and Sugimoto will also be working with five artist-collaborators in Iowa City to bring art to these spaces. Handmade paper will feature prominently in each installation.
Visit Iowa Art Field October 30 - November 8, 2025 at three locations:
Stay tuned for more details on programming, tours, and associated events!
Get Involved!
Iowa Art Field is looking for community engagement team members! Do you…
Have interest in Iowa’s human/environmental ecology?
Enjoy talking with strangers?
Want to interact with artists?
Have an interest in facilitating events?
More Info
During Cladis’ life in Echizen, Japan — a region with over 1,500 years of papermaking history — he was a contributing artist and committee member of Imadate Art Field, a non-profit arts organization there (and the inspiration behind our name!). Cladis worked to restore historic structures, turning them into alternative exhibition spaces for installation art. Upon arrival to Iowa, Cladis was struck by the specific usage and appearance of the Midwestern landscape, ranging from agricultural detritus to pristine barns.
Like Echizen, Iowa City is a community of thoughtful makers and creatives. With the arts, Iowa Art Field seeks to highlight Iowa City’s remarkable structures and locations — not only for their aesthetic properties, but also their conceptual implications and ability to operate as spiritual lodestones. The installations for Iowa Art Field are conversations as much as they are works of art, and we hope by re-homing art to these spaces that we can bring connection and creative expression to one another.
In 2024, Public Space One hosted a comprehensive reading room of Imadate Art Field’s history. Read more about that here.
Artist-Curators
Iowa Art Field founder/director Nicholas Cladis’ site-responsive installation practice gravitates towards non-traditional exhibition venues that have the ability to highlight human and environmental ecology. Art in this context is meant to be enjoyed by the public in relation to architecture, history, and culture, among others. In its most basic form, an installation is meant to bring people together. To experience an installation is not only to view it, but also to travel and witness. Iowa Art Field invites our visitors to likewise engage with Iowa City landmarks.
Sugimoto Hiroshi was one of the founding artists of Imadate Art Field in 1979. Sugimoto’s work won accolades from guest curator Lee Ufan throughout the 1980s and 90s iterations of the exhibition. In the early 2000s, Sugimoto took a hiatus from his practice to work as a caretaker for people with disabilities. He re-emerged in 2020 and has been actively producing new artwork since. He held a solo exhibition of new work at the Udatsu Paper & Craft Museum in Japan in 2023. Sugimoto recently opened a new gallery space committed to handmade paper art.
Participating artists to-be-announced!
Thank You
IAF is hosted by Public Space One and made possible with support from the City of Iowa City Public Art Matching Grant.
IAF would not be possible without our wonderful Iowa City and Johnson County collaborators! A big thanks you to Julie Watkins and Ilsa DeWald at Johnson County Historic Poor Farm, and Juli Seydell Johnson, Brad Barker, Tyler Baird, and the entire staff of Iowa City Parks & Recreation.
