Alumni Spotlight: Printmaking and conservation meet at the Museum of Infinite Outcomes
Studying art can lead you to surprising places. For University of Tennessee printmaking alumna Ashlee Mays, it was to a plot of foreclosed land in Knoxville’s Parkridge neighborhood, where she created one of Tennessee’s most unique outdoor spaces: the Museum of Infinite Outcomes, an open-air museum that is shifting the narrative of conservation through the arts.
Since Mays first opened the museum in 2020, it has become a beloved part of the city and received local and national attention for its creative and timely take on art and conservation. Recently, Mays was featured both in the Knoxville News Sentinel and in an essay in Garden and Gun magazine, in which writer Latria Graham reflected on the Museum of Infinite Outcome’s “hopeful” view of conservation in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Mays, who founded the organization while she was a graduate student at UT, initially purchased the property with her husband and co-director, Logan Szymanowki, because she wanted to “make work outdoors.”
“I never really was good at making art that went inside, and especially inside in a space that was curated specifically for looking at art. It took a little bit of the magic away from my work,” said Mays, who relocated to Knoxville from Chicago in 2016 to attend UT’s printmaking program. “So we bought the land without any specific intention around it.”
While Mays was creating art and researching the theory and history of printmaking in UT’s nationally-ranked program – and winning awards for unique art projects such as HOTDOG Cart – the land primarily functioned as a community garden. The idea for a museum took shape as she was writing her graduate thesis. At first, she envisioned a School of Infinite Outcomes that invited students to “actively engage” with conservation. Developing an open-air museum came from a desire to show conservation not only as a tool to preserve biodiversity, but as an evolving, participatory force.
“We were seeing the landscape not die and be reborn every year, but go through this shifting of energy – an energy that can’t be created or destroyed, but can change forms,” said Mays. “We wanted to build these exhibits that really highlighted that stance in conservation.”
“There’s too long been this idea in conservation that there’s the human built world and the natural world, and that they’re separate,” she continued. “I don’t think we can live in a world where those two worlds are separate. We have to figure out how to cohabitate.”
Although printmaking and conservation may not seem connected, the move from the MFA program at UT to the Museum of Infinite Outcomes was natural to Mays, who has long been interested in exploring how art, the natural world, and human society influence and shape one another.
“Prints can say a lot about the relationships between people and information or ideas,” she said. “People see things and believe those things to be true, so those print shape people. That’s true in the landscape too – people make plants, and plants make people.”
There’s too long been this idea in conservation that there’s the human built world and the natural world, and that they’re separate. I don’t think we can live in a world where those two worlds are separate. We have to figure out how to cohabitate.
Although Mays’ initial vision for a School of Infinite Outcomes evolved into the museum, educational programming is still a major part of the organization’s mission, with exhibitions inviting visitors to be a part of the world around them. Many are seasonal displays of “craft and cohabitation” that show how native plants, animals and other organisms comingle with human-made habitats and artwork. Visitors can explore the complex churning of compost in the How The World Eats Itself exhibit, while the What Is It Like to Be a Bat? exhibit allows humans to experience echolocation.
Another popular seasonal display is Avifauna, a rotating exhibition of human-crafted homes for birds that has developed into a month-long celebration of Knoxville’s feathered residents. New public programming around Avifauna, including birdhouse-building workshops and an art exhibition at Ijam’s Nature Center, will kick off in March 2025.
“We created the Avifauna as a way to celebrate the craft of people creating spaces to cohabitate with other populations – in this case, birds,” she continued. “This is the fifth year that it’s up, and it’s doing great.”
Early support from UT’s printmaking program helped the Museum develop into the unique community space it is today.
“I had ideas of doing something like the museum, but with, without that support, it would have been really hard for me to get it out of the grassroots,” she said. “It needed a bit of a push. And UT really helped with that.”
Learn more about the Museum of Infinite Outcomes and its current programming at museumofinfiniteoutcomes.com.