The River’s Edge Discovery Center on First Street north of Central Avenue is a $6.7 million project of Webster County Conservation. The Nature Center building will be focused on Iowa’s water resources. The center exhibit space will feature an array of exhibits on the water cycle, wetlands, glaciers and rivers and streams.

The project is being funded through a $4 million Destination Iowa grant from the state, a $300,000 grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and through private donations.

In November, Webster County Conservation Director Matt Cosgrove said the project was “way ahead of schedule.”

Taylor Studios, an exhibition design firm out of Rantoul, Illinois, is working on building the water-themed exhibits that will be featured. Installation of the exhibits will take place in the coming weeks.

-Messenger file photo by Kelby Wingert
Des Moines artists Laura Todd and Kathleen Joy Roling work on a wall mural that will depict how the different layers of the ground filter water. The mural is part of the interior of the River’s Edge Discovery Center that is being built in Fort Dodge.

In January, Des Moines artists Kathleen Joy Roling and Laura Todd began the process of painting a massive mural on the walls of the main exhibit space of the nature center to really celebrate the water theme.

Their colorful design gives a glimpse of lakes, ponds and streams, and the flora and fauna that rely on those water sources to thrive.

“[Webster County Conservation] showed us what they wanted, but then we put our style into it,” Roling said.

The two artists began work on the mural in mid-January. Using a video projector and a scissor lift, they started with sketching the outline of the design on the walls. Once they finished with that, they began filling in the color.

“It’s more efficient to just work on getting our outlines on and making it to painting later because we only have the lifts for so long,” Todd said.

-Messenger photo by Britt Kudla
The front entrance to the River’s Edge Discovery Center is shown during construction last fall. It was eventually enclosed.

Above one of the windows will be a mural depicting the Des Moines River and Lizard Creek running through Fort Dodge and under the Karl King and Kenyon Road bridges.

“This one, they’d like to show how the waterways and the streams work with the urban landscape,” Todd said.

Above another window will be a mural of a “prairie pothole,” a depressional wetland or freshwater marsh.

Todd and Roling spent a lot of time researching the water cycle, wildlife and aquatic plant life as they designed the mural.

“We have to be accurate,” Roling said.

-Submitted image
This rendering shows the plans for a playscape outside the River’s Edge Discovery Center. Citizen’s Community Credit Union has pledged $50,000 toward the project.

“This really was a job designed well for us because we love nature — it’s our thing,” Todd added. “We’re nature people.”

Collaboration was key to the creation of this mural, Roling said.

“Laura and I are both individual professional artists, but we partner a lot on really big projects,” she said. “We’re really good friends and we just naturally started assisting each other on mural projects, and then we got to the point where we started partnering on really big ones.”

“We work really well together,” Todd added. “Our styles mesh really well together.”

Recently, Roling and Todd were working on painting details on the wall that depict the underground water cycle.

-Submitted image
This aerial view shows the plans for the paths and playscape area outside the River's Edge Discovery Center from above.

“There’s the specific layers of the earth and when you travel down, it has the different kinds of rock faces that we’re trying to simulate to give an accurate depiction,” Todd said.

The immensity of the project was something the two artists aren’t used to.

“This is the biggest project that either of us has ever done, so we’re learning a lot and it’s really good for our future,” Todd added.

Todd and Roling expect to have the murals complete by March 1. Once the murals are finished, Taylor Studios will install the exhibits for the nature center.