Coffee Mug - Pussy-Toes

The mug's design is from The Prairie Code, an installation the artist, Karen Ellzey Wright, designed for Driftless Prairie Visions. The code is a botanical information system to help simplify the process of locating essential plant information quickly 

Holds 15 oz., dishwasher and microwave safe (though hand-washing provides maximum image life).

KAREN ELLZEY WRIGHT

Karen integrates art, science, and information design in much of her work with the goal of uncovering new insights and perspectives about the natural world. Her Prairie Code designs are based on an original installation she created for Driftless Prairie Visions, collaborative exhibit featuring the work of five Wisconsin women artists. The exhibit spotlights the importance of native plants in Wisconsin’s Driftless prairies, including Taliesin Preservation’s Welsh Hill and Phoebe Point prairies, through phenology and other data. (Phenology is the timing of cyclical events in nature.)

Driftless Prairie Visions debuted at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum’s Steinhauer Gallery in 2024 and has also exhibited at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Wyoming Valley School Cultural Arts Center in Spring Green. Upcoming exhibitions include the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, WI and Carleton College in Minnesota. For more information about the project, go to www.driftlessprairievisions.com.

Drawing inspiration from The Periodic Table of the Elements, Karen initially conceived of the Prairie Code design as a botanical information system to make essential plant data more accessible and useful to anyone interested in understanding, preserving, reconstructing, and protecting increasingly threatened environments. She hopes it will help focus attention on native plants’ vital role for pollinators and land quality in rapidly declining prairies and grasslands.

Karen has worn many hats throughout her life: management consultant, strategic facilitator, information designer – and now multi-media artist, amateur naturalist, and Driftless landowner focused on habitat stewardship. She is a past board member of Taliesin Preservation, Inc. and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. She currently serves on the board of Unity Chapel, the Lloyd Jones family chapel located across from Taliesin on County Road T, where she married her husband Tim Wright, the youngest grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright. Karen and Tim divide their time between Ridgeway, Wisconsin and Chicago.