When Dan Fasching started painting again after a decade, he said it was because it was something near and dear to his heart. His muse? The Mississippi River that he works on every day.
Fasching, who started with USACE as a student in 2011, now serves as the primary Mississippi River regulator for the 13 locks and dams within the St. Paul District from Minneapolis to Guttenberg, Iowa.
As a regulator, Fasching helps to direct and coordinate the lock and dam gate movements in support of the navigation mission to ensure a minimum 9-foot depth is constantly maintained.
“Navigation on the Mississippi River is vital to the nation’s economy; as long as navigation continues, we are succeeding,” Fasching said.
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.”
“In water management, we adhere to the bounds of the water control manuals by creating plans to coordinate all St. Paul District 13 locks and dams at once, and it’s a serious challenge!” Fasching said. “You have to adapt your plans constantly to the ambiguity of changing weather patterns, incomplete data or corrections from past decisions. We’re playing jazz so to speak by regulating the more than 250 river miles of the St. Paul District in real time.”
“Engineering school was structured with complete concepts and examples, but the reality and application is a lot more challenging and messier than people might expect,” he said. “It’s like learning how to drive by reading a book.”
Fasching has always had an affinity for art. As an advanced placement art student in high school, Fasching wanted to pursue art as a career, before his dad gently guided him in the direction of civil engineering. He attended the University of Minnesota – Duluth and graduated with his civil engineering degree in 2015.
“My art fell by the wayside during college; there wasn’t much opportunity to practice,” he said. Fasching did not come back to art until a few years ago. “I was so engrossed with my work and the seriousness of growing up.” Eventually, he met his wife, an art therapist and former art teacher, and they connected over their love of art.
When Fasching began to paint again, he was inspired by his work on the river.
“My paintings of the river are the way I see it through water management. It’s not perfect so I don’t use perfect realism, there are violent movement brushstrokes, deep landscapes and active water as it roils down the river,” he said. “I try to show the power and mystery of the river.”
As he started his career, Fasching said he believed in the fallacy that because we know how physics works, we can perfectly predict things. “That is juxtaposed with the reality of water management, when the math isn’t working out because the data isn’t available and yet you still need to make a decision now.”
Fasching said this is why he prefers impressionist painting. “You don’t have to be perfect; you can paint the wild side of the river and the unpredictability of it that we see in water management.”
Fasching said he does not recommend water management for people who need exactness and control. “A lot of the job is living in that uncertainty, waiting for results, and the way you deal with it in your personal life is up to you. You have to be comfortable living in that unknown and have faith in your ability and understanding,” he said. “It’s the same thing when you paint, you need to have the confidence that it’s going to work out, because once the paint is dry, it’s done.”
Fasching takes his own photos as a reference then uses acrylic paint for his impressionist paintings, which differs from historical impressionist painters who used oil because of the slow dry times that allow more time to mix and blend on the canvas. He said he never formally learned oil painting but tries to emulate the look of oil painting, which is doable with modern paints. “You can add gels and other things to make paint thicker or thinner and more or less transparent. I can decide if I want the orange underpainting coming through or not, change the mood or the look and make the colors pop. Plus, you don’t have to deal with the fumes.”
Fasching concluded, “A lot of the challenge of my job is in those in-between moments, the less studied ones that rely on experience and intuition. I enjoy painting the river in an impressionist way, where it’s clearly the river, but it brings out the ambiguity that I see when I regulate into the painting itself. I want the viewer to know that there is still room for humans, and the wildlife in-between the infrastructure, mathematics and hard science that control and monitor but make modern life possible today. In the river and in my paintings, you see the human experience and great visual beauty, and also the power and economic use too, to support the navigation mission.”
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