Project Summary: There are 7.4 hogs per person in the State of Iowa. Impressed by this statistic, I plan to illustrate this at life-scale in the form of several wheat paste murals across Iowa. The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium commissioned from me, and accessioned into their permanent collection, a drawing of a life-scale hog for their 20th Anniversary exhibition (2023). The drawing features one of the most common hogs raised in Iowa, the Yorkshire, standing 3 ft at the shoulder and 5’5” long. I propose to wheat paste 7.4 reproductions of my original drawing tail-to-snout on 42’ sections of wall in locations across Iowa to illustrate the statistic, with the viewer becoming the 1 in the 1:7.4 ratio.

Iowa has 7.4 hogs per person, yet most Iowans encounter that number abstractly. This project seeks to graphically illustrate the statistic. By repeating my life-size Yorkshire hog drawing in a 42-foot, tail-to-snout chain at street level, viewers experience the ratio at their own height and pace, turning data into a direct, public activation. The project’s ground-level placement and free access are intentional: they lower barriers and invite encounters from passersby of all ages and abilities. This work grows from my long focus on scale, repetition, and pattern in painting and from the museum-commissioned, life-scale hog drawing now in the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium’s collection. The project responds to Iowa’s mixed rural/urban landscape—barns, agricultural outbuildings, downtown facades, warehouse walls—especially in eastern Iowa communities such as Dubuque, Iowa City, and Cedar Rapids. Installing in both contexts invites multiple perspectives on the same image: farmers, workers, neighbors, and visitors each bring different readings of scale, economy, and daily life. This approach engages underutilized civic and agricultural surfaces as temporary public galleries, meeting people where they already gather.

Artist Bio: Andonia Giannakouros is a figurative painter based in Dubuque, Iowa. Her work honors the slow, imperfect beauty of handmade patterns—passed down, stitched, carved, and woven through generations of artisans in her family. She draws from folk traditions where embroidery, weaving, and painting serve as vessels of memory, shared language, and symbolic inheritance. Giannakouros’ visual vocabulary is shaped by early travels to Greece and the repeated forms of European streets—where posters layered on walls and tiled surfaces create rhythms that insist on attention. In her practice, repetition becomes a method of emphasis and a structure of persistence. Over the past two decades, her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee, Illinois, and Arkansas, and is included in both private collections and the permanent collection of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. Giannakouros works from a public studio in downtown Dubuque, open by appointment.

Website: https://www.giannaka.com; https://www.fantasmapress.com; https://www.dubuqueartcity.com

Instagram: @annaka35, @dubuqueartcity