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A utility pole among a copse of trees. A mailbox on a quiet neighborhood street. A tunnel beneath a roundabout. The kind of things that pass unnoticed on an ordinary stroll through Northfield. But for St. Olaf College Associate Professor of Practice in Art and Art History Michon Weeks, they have become an invitation to stop, look, and pay attention. 

That practice of observation of the ordinary is at the heart of Michon Weeks: Mystic Topographies, a new body of work on display this fall in the Flaten Art Museum. Featuring approximately 20 paintings alongside works on paper and selections from Weeks’ sketchbooks, the exhibition explores the built and natural landscapes that surround us — and what might be revealed when we take the time to truly notice them. 

“For this exhibition, I turn more outward and look at the things that I see all of the time when I’m out in nature,” Weeks says. “It’s not so much based on emotion as it is a feeling of intense attention — really paying attention very closely when I’m working and looking at the landscape, those have been the most important things.”

The exhibition also marks a significant moment in Weeks’ career on the Hill. She will retire at the end of this academic year, and Mystic Topographies serves as a celebration of her work as a longtime painting professor. 

“It is my final year, so we have a tradition in our department to have a solo show in the Flaten Art Museum, and it’s usually a retrospective,” Weeks shares. “However, I wanted to show brand-new things — I’m excited to show people what I’ve got happening.”

Mystic Topographies began with a conversation between Weeks and Associate Professor of Practice in Religion Trish Zimmerman, whose research into mysticism, place, and the local landscape prompted Weeks to reconsider the relationship between her artistic practice and the immediate world around her. 

Their conversations included the work of historical mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen and the ways they understood land as sacred. Weeks says those ideas also raise contemporary ecological questions about how people relate to the places they inhabit. 

“[The mystics] connect to our current ecological challenges, because if we can change our relationship with the landscape, that has the power to influence policy change or how we live our lives,” Weeks says.

Zimmerman recommended Douglas Christie’s The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, which helped Weeks recognize a possibility in her own practice. She had often approached her work by beginning with ideas. What, she wondered, would happen if she instead turned outward?

With support from the Creative Arts Collective, which is funded by the Lilly Endowment, Weeks was able to dedicate the fall semester of last year to exploring that question. The resulting body of work grew prolifically: Flaten Art Museum Director Jane Becker Nelson ’04 says there were approximately 50 pieces to consider when selecting works for the exhibition. Over the course of the year, Becker Nelson made a series of visits to Weeks’ studio, initially responding to works as they developed and eventually helping select the pieces that would compose Mystic Topographies. 

“We really wanted to show a range of the different approaches she’s using,” Becker Nelson says of the selected works  “At the same time, we wanted the space to maintain a really minimalist, quiet feeling, because for her, painting is like a meditative practice — almost like prayer.”

That sense of contemplation extends beyond the paintings themselves. A “Painter’s Library” within the exhibition features books and writings that have influenced Weeks’ thinking. Through a QR code, visitors can also hear Weeks and Zimmerman read excerpts from thinkers spanning contemporary writers, biblical authors, and medieval mystics. 

The exhibition also includes selections from the roughly 50 sketchbooks Becker Nelson reviewed from the past decades of Weeks’ practice. Filled with drawings, observations, notes, and questions, they provide another perspective on the considerations that precede a finished piece. 

“I find that the sketchbooks offer a little window into the deep thinking space that guides [Weeks’] practices,” Becker Nelson says. “They have not only the drawings, they have the ideas she’s testing out — maybe she’s listening to a lecture, and then you can see her thinking through it: How have I experienced this? How would I say it in my own words? What does this call me to do? Where am I in this? Visitors get a little sense of who she is and some of the questions she’s grappling with, which are probably very similar to their own.”

Many of the works in Mystic Topographies trace their origins to a notebook, but their conception likely started on foot. 

Weeks walks through Northfield carrying a camera and sketchbook, recording whatever catches her attention. Her subjects aren’t necessarily conventionally picturesque. Alongside shrubs and clouds are vehicles and fences — the accumulated features of a landscape shaped by both nature and suburbia. 

Back in her studio, Weeks often converts a photograph to black and white and uses it to establish the basic contours of a painting. Then she puts the photo away. From there, observation gives way to intuition. 

“The work looks abstract, because I’m drawing the shapes and placing them in empty space — I’m making them all flat,” Weeks explains. “I’m also trying not to use any of the colors I see in the landscape. I am trying to be attentive to the painting, rather than the reference.”

Weeks primarily works with egg tempera and oil paint, and seeks to balance representation and abstraction. One of her favorite works in the exhibition strikes this equilibrium.

“There’s one small work on paper as you’re entering the gallery, it’s kind of an alizarin crimson mixed with black that turns almost purple a little bit, and it’s the view into a roundabout tunnel that’s near my house — I like that one in particular because it strikes an interesting balance in terms of abstraction of space, but also reads as that roundabout tunnel,” she explains. “I’m really wanting to get some sort of a balance in the work where you can sort of recognize something, but it is also surprising in terms of the color and shape.”

For Becker Nelson, that process of slowing down and looking carefully gives Mystic Topographies particular resonance beyond the museum.

“At the Flaten Art Museum, we’re always thinking about how art relates to life, and I think one of the big topics that people are thinking about right now, especially on this campus and within our cultural context with the rise of AI and the proliferation of images, is slowness,” she says. “I’ve noticed a real interest on this campus in slow looking, slow teaching, slow everything. [Weeks] has always embraced slowness as essential to her practice to sharpen her observations — what this exhibition does is share a brand new body of work, but grounds it in a tradition of contemplative practices that go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.” 

As Weeks enters her final year at St. Olaf, she is particularly excited to share the exhibition with students. She plans to meet with classes in the museum and will teach painting this fall, giving her students an opportunity to encounter their professor’s practice outside the classroom. 

“We mainly look at works of art digitally nowadays, so this exhibit gives you a taste of real physical art, and it’s quite a different thing,” she says. “There’s a texture and a physicality to it that you can’t really see online.”

It is an observation that echoes the philosophy behind Mystic Topographies. The landscapes Weeks depicts are neither monumental nor isolated. Most are representative of the everyday experience of walking through Northfield. What is altered is the attention given them. 

After years of helping Oles develop their own ways of seeing, Weeks is spending her final year inviting the community to look alongside her — slowly, closely, and perhaps long enough to find something unexpected in a familiar place. 

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Michon Weeks: Mystic Topographies will be on display at the Flaten Art Museum September 11–December 6, with a public opening reception on September 11. At 5 p.m., attendees will gather in Viking Theater for a screening of a new short film on Weeks’ practice, followed by a live conversation between Zimmerman and Weeks delving into the sacred mystery of perception. The celebration will then move to the Center for Art and Dance at 6 p.m., where attendees will enjoy refreshments and community.