Clean water starts on the land. Art starts the conversation.

The quality of a community’s drinking water is shaped long before it reaches the tap, by the choices farmers, homeowners, and landowners make on the land. The Source Water Protection Collaborative (SWPC), a Minnesota-based initiative facilitated by Environmental Initiative, brings together diverse stakeholders to advance collective action for drinking water protection. 

Creative engagement is one tool the Collaborative uses to build community investment in source water protection. By offering community members a hands-on role in creating something together, the Collaborative connects with people who are interested in expanding their knowledge of drinking water and opens space for deeper conversations. The Collaborative piloted this approach in 2023, commissioning artist Su Legatt to work with the community of Little Falls on a papermaking and public art project centered on drinking water. Building on momentum from the pilot, the Collaborative is expanding the model to Chatfield in 2026. 

Mary Beth Magyar, M.Ed., a Rochester-based artist, educator, and community organizer, is the Collaborative’s artist-in-residence in Chatfield this year, working closely with the City of Chatfield and the Chatfield Center for the Arts to design her project. Magyar was selected from 22 applicants and holds a BFA in painting from Michigan State University and a master’s in education from Hamline University. Her community engagement practice spans murals, mosaics, and hands-on art workshops with schools and community organizations in the Rochester area, work that earned her the Rochester Mayor’s Medal of Honor for Arts and Cultural Achievement in 2023. 

To begin her residency, Magyar discussed the project with local community members and will focus on creating two mosaics. The first, at Chatfield Center for the Arts, will depict the region’s karst geology in cross-section, showing the layers of land and rock that drinking water filters through, alongside the farms, prairies, and homes that sit above it. The second, at Chatfield City Hall, will draw on the building’s art deco details while weaving in references to the karst landscape, fish, and local flora. 

For Magyar the finished pieces are just the beginning of the conversation. “The mosaics are a way into a bigger conversation. When someone glazes a tile that ends up next to their neighbor’s, they start thinking about the land and water they share and what they can do to protect it.” 

The mosaics will be built through community participation. Throughout the summer, residents can join Magyar at the Chatfield Growers Market on Thursdays and at Chatfield Center for the Arts on Wednesdays. Attendees will be encouraged to cut, texture, and glaze clay tiles that will become part of the finished pieces. Magyar will also bring the project into Chatfield schools, senior living facilities, and community events including Western Days and the Fillmore County Fair. Each session will include conversation about different source water protection topics, including nitrates, fertilizer timing, native plantings, private well testing, and practical steps for protecting water. Magyar grounds her work in hands-on experience and dialogue, with the aim of giving residents a genuine sense of agency over something that affects their daily lives. 

The Chatfield residency runs through 2026, and additional artist-led community engagement projects are being planned for 2027 and 2028. 

You can follow along with this project on Environmental Initiative’s social media. Want to support the Collaborative’s work? Download our sponsorship document or reach out to Britta Dornfeld to learn more about monetary and in-kind sponsorship opportunities.  

Thank you to the Minnesota Department of Health for their support of the Source Water Protection Collaborative through the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment.