OTHELLO – For 37 years, Pirie and Jane Grant have grown everything from hay and wheat to beans and potatoes on their central Washington farm. They’ve tilled the soil, rotated crops and nurtured their slice of the sprawling area farm and ranch lands – so much so that agricultural groups have recognized the Grants for their sustainable land practices.
| Maryhill Museum of Art: www.maryhillmuseum.org
American Farmland Trust: www.farmland.org |
The art community is now recognizing it, too. Through a partnership between the American Farmland Trust and the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, artists from across the Pacific Northwest are visiting farms in the region to document – in their own way – conservation efforts by farmers.
Some are using photographs, while others are painting landscapes. Michelle Arab, a landscape architect from Seattle and the artist assigned to the Grant farm, is building a sculpture she hopes will represent the wildlife habitat the family has fostered for decades.
“You really do get the sense that they care about this place and wildlife,” Arab said, taking a break from gathering tules from a wetland for her artwork. “I only hope I can do justice to this place.”
A nearly $45,000 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services made the artist-farmer exchange possible. Under the program, 12 artists from Washington, Idaho and Oregon each visited farms in their home states. Their assignment: use art to showcase sustainable land practices, conservation efforts and environment-friendly farm practices.
The image of spiky-haired artists roaming a conservative farmer’s land might seem unusual, said Don Stuart, Northwest field director for American Farmland Trust, an agricultural advocacy group. But sometimes it takes offbeat efforts to get the point across, he said.
“If people can see an artist’s rendition of how a farmer has dealt with erosion of soil, or how he has preserved wildlife habitat on the farm, maybe the fact that it’s a little different will make that message stick,” Stuart said.
The artists appreciate the opportunity to explore new territory, said Lee Musgrave, curator of contemporary exhibits at the Maryhill Museum of Art.
“There aren’t a lot of exhibits that deal with the issues these farmers deal with, or in an artistic way,” Musgrave said. “I see that as a real opportunity for this exhibit.”
In the process, normally tightlipped farmers have found themselves sharing their views on everything from pesticide use to God.
The two sides can’t help finding common ground, said Jane Grant, a farmer’s wife who paints in her spare time.
“I think art and farming go together. They should go together – it’s management of the landscape,” she said.
Bonnie Meltzer of Portland, Ore., has begun piecing together a three-dimensional sculpture in the shape of a farmer’s overalls. The hinged front panel opens to reveal three panels that each tell a different story of the Sweeney farm in Dayton, Ore.
Tiny wooden houses on stilts – with shoes perhaps – represent the encroachment of development. “Houses will be walking all over this farmland,” Meltzer said.
One panel, representing the balance between sun and water, includes the grasses that farmer Sam Sweeney has planted by the side of the road. The bioswale acts as a sort of filter both for what contaminants are coming off the road and off the farm.
Artwork about sustainable agriculture would be incomplete without addressing the next generation as well, said Meltzer, who raved about watching Sweeney’s granddaughter present her 4-H project at the local fair.
“She was so poised and so smart,” Meltzer said. “It’s all about the next generation. If you don’t have farmers, you don’t have farms.”
For Sweeney, whose family has grown row crops in western Oregon since 1923, the exhibit marked the perfect chance to reach out and touch his “city cousins” and teach them about his way of life.
“My goal would be to spread the message that we in agriculture are looking at the long-term effects of what we do on the land and on our communities,” Sweeney said. Urban neighbors need to recognize that farmers try to do the right thing, he said.
“Not only by them, but the environment, wildlife, so that it will not only be something that will benefit their generation, but for generations to come.”
The exhibit will open at the Maryhill Museum of Art on March 15, 2006.
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