On the Map: The Lexicon of Sustainability

Family at a Lexicon of Sustainability pop-up art show; Douglas Gayeton, KQED blog

By Rachel Rudi, Digital Contributor

In this week's update from our Rural Arts and Culture Map, The Art of the Rural is pleased to share two videos posted by Alejo Kraus-Polk, a researcher with The Lexicon of Sustainability: "This is the Story of An Egg" discusses with California farmers the uncomfortable truth behind marketing catchphrases like "cage-free" and "free-range," and the promise of "pasture-raised" eggs; "Foraging" chronicles society's straying from eating with the seasons and leaning heavily on conventional agriculture, then follows present-day foragers into North American forests and waters. Both videos focus on the original definitions and gradual manipulations of agricultural and culinary words and terms, the subtle power of language and the empowerment that comes from dissecting it.

We have written about The Lexicon of Sustainability before, as we're continually struck by how their work promotes the above ideas with an elegant balance of sharp photography, handwritten words and flowcharts, and enhancing audio. Tejal Rao of Grist magazine detailed the creation process:

[LS Founder Douglas] Gayeton got the idea for the Lexicon project about two years ago, in the middle of a dinner party, when a guest butchered the definition of "food miles." If Gayeton could define and build out the language of sustainability, he thought, he could give people the tools they needed to bounce around real ideas. To make a change. Gayeton identified 100 key terms and began visiting the farmers, fishermen, foragers, and chefs across the country who could help him define them. "I simply spend time with them. I don't know what I'm doing in advance and I don't storyboard anything. I just listen." 

The artist shoots an average of 1,000 photographs with each of his subjects. He then prints the photos out, cutting and pasting up to 100 of them together to create a massive collage (the smaller pieces are four by five feet; the larger ones cover a wall). From here Gayeton takes the stories of his subjects – their thoughts, recipes,ramblings – and writes them down on a sheet of glass, which is layered on the collage and shot again, the text floating dreamily above the image. This painstaking process, even with the assistance of a small team, takes Gayeton about three weeks.

Each still shines, and the films shimmer. Crisp presentation grounds the stories, philosophies, etymologies, and we watch ideas and reclamations build on screen. Ultimately, the Lexicon of Sustainability brings us all to square one and irons out the words we use, or have heard, or haven't heard, or have mispronounced, before handing us our language back, newly accessible, meaningfully enhanced, and wrinkle-free.

Be sure to explore the Lexicon of Sustainability's website, and to follow Mr. Kraus-Polk on the Rural Arts and Culture Map for more posts. Below, "This is the Story of An Egg" and "Foraging." Enjoy!

Lexicon of Sustainability: This is the Story of An Egg from lexicon of sustainability on Vimeo.


Lexicon of Sustainability: Foraging from lexicon of sustainability on Vimeo.

Walking the Fields, From Liberia to California

Sacramento Bee

High Country News has long been one of our favorite publications; they consistently think in new terms about the West, but also about urban-rural and rural-international connections. Such a perspective continues with "In Rural California, a Liberian Family Finds an Agricultural Refuge," by Laura Markham.  

Markham's article offers not only an inspiring story of how immigrant families are contributing to local agriculture, but also a much-needed look into how African-Americans helped to transform such practices in the state last century. We'll include an excerpt below:

On a historic 50-acre ranch in Northern California, Cynnomih Tarlesson and her nine children drop watermelon seeds into the ground. Behind them, her father, Roosevelt, uses a tractor to churn up the dirt for tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant -- along with some lesser-known crops, like the Tarlesson-named 'Billy Goat Pepper,' from the family's native West Africa.

When war erupted in her Liberian hometown in 1990, Cynnomih and her family fled their farm and lived for over two years in the bush, foraging for berries, shoots and small fish. After several years in a refugee camp in the Ivory Coast, Cynnomih, now 43, finally received permission to come to the U.S. as a refugee, along with 25 younger siblings and children (biological and adopted). They joined her father, Rev. Roosevelt Tarlesson, in Vacaville, Calif., where he had lived since the 1970s.

Vacaville was a peaceful escape from the harsh refugee-camp life in Ivory Coast -- plenty of food, friendly neighbors and teachers assisting their transition to U.S. life. Yet in this suburban environment, the family's job prospects were low and financial pressures high. They missed farming; they missed the land. So in 2007, the Tarlessons secured a loan to buy property in nearby Guinda, population 254. 'When refugees are brought to this country, they are put in cities, making minimum wage at factories. Why? They know how to farm. Let them farm!' says Rev. Tarlesson, who's pushing this idea with resettlement agencies at the national level.

Continue reading here:

Related Articles:
40 Years in the West: High Country News 

New Work From Places: Rural Studio, Cotton Farmers, The Sound of Music, And Our Natural Space

Bloom, 2010; Michael Lundgren 

One of the most valuable resources for considering how the arts intersect with and enliven the rural-urban exchange can be found in Places, "an interdisciplinary journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism, with particular emphasis on the public realm as physical place and social ideal."

Today we would like to offer links to some recent work from Places that expands conversations and ideas we've shared with our readers and collaborators. Below we will feature a brief selection from each piece followed by links to the larger, visually-rich articles:

Samuel Mockbee of Rural Studio

Lessons From The Front Lines Of Social Design is an essay by Will Holman that charts this designer's time spent at the Arcosanti urban laboratory, YouthBuild, and Rural Studio - while also touching on projects we've also discussed: Epicenter and Studio H. 

Below is an excerpt from Mr. Holman's time at Rural Studio:

The Rural Studio was founded in 1993 by architects Samuel Mockbee and D.K. Ruth, around the same time I was dreaming away afternoons in my elementary school library. Both professors at Auburn University, Mockbee and Ruth set up shop in Newbern, Alabama, three hours away from the main campus. Greensboro, ten miles north, along with nearby Moundville and Tuscaloosa, were at the center of James Agee and Walker Evan’s Depression-era study of sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [10]. Mockbee and Ruth hoped to expose students to three things usually missing from modern architectural education: construction, clients and social engagement. “Rural Studio is what architecture should be about, not what it should theoretically be about,” said Danny Wicke, a former instructor and student. “Engaging in practice makes school real and gives it context.” [11] Mockbee died in 2001, and Ruth in 2009, but not before the Rural Studio earned Mockbee a MacArthur “genius” grant and a wave of positive press from around the world. Now directed by British transplant Andrew Freear, the studio has concentrated on raising standards of professionalism and building larger civic projects. “I want to get students to dream about our society,” says Freear. “Architects are not just playthings of the rich.”

The Hills Are Alive is an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging essay by Michael P. Branch, a Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno and a columnist for The High Country News. 

In this piece Dr. Branch takes a moment of family history - his daughter's performing a version of Julie Andrews' revelry on their Nevada hillside far -and transforms the memory into the groundwork for a meditation on romantic and ecological landscapes. Here's his introduction:

My grandmother’s highest compliment for a natural landscape was to say that it was “pretty as a picture.” Even as a kid I remember thinking that this aesthetic was somehow upside-down, that the beauty of art should be judged according to the inimitable standard of natural beauty rather than the other way around. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, well-heeled European travelers toured the countryside looking for views that would be as pretty as a picture — or, to be more precise, as pretty as a painting. And because they had a certain kind of painting in mind as embodying their standard of natural beauty, these early ecotourists often carried with them a small, convex, tinted mirror known as a “Claude glass,” after the 17th-century landscape painter Claude Lorrain. When a picturesque landscape was encountered — say, the snow-capped Alps — the tourists would turn their backs to the mountains and whip out their Claude glass, holding it up to frame the mountains, which were not only reflected but also color-shifted to a tonal range that made them appear more painterly. And voila! The rugged Alps become not only pretty as a picture, but become a picture, as the pleased ecotourists admired not the mountains but rather the image they had created. But must we turn our backs on the land to see it as aesthetically pleasing? Why do we so often love our representations of the world more dearly than we love the world itself? 

a selection from a photograph from Kathleen Robbin's project

We also highly recommend visiting Places to view Cotton Farmers: Photographs from the American South, a collaboration between Kathleen Robbins and writer Mary Carol Miller. Ms. Robbins, whose grandfather was a third-generation cotton farmer, recently returned to her family farm for an intensive five weeks of photography and interviews, alongside Ms. Miller. (NPR also provides more of the context here.)

The Places slideshow captures the breathtaking sweep of the land, yet also communicates the physical and mental hardship of continuing these practices. Below, Mary Carol Miller's prose speaks to this situation:

We found a handful of men and women who remain where their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers planted their flags. Each spring, they weigh the odds and walk the land, recognizing every turnrow and low point and subtle rise over a thousand or two thousand or even eleven thousand acres. And, once again, as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did, they will buy the seed and the fertilizer and service the tractors and the combines and hire the cropdusters and begin the daily prayers for more rain or no rain and sunshine and cool nights and no tropical storms in September and no frost in early October. And their children, muttering about the social challenges of being way out there and never having a next-door neighbor, will slowly, slowly find their own souls tied to that dirt.

Untitled, 2010; Michael Lundgren

Last week Places published a collaboration that speaks to the concerns delineated across these pieces. If There Be Such a Place is a slideshow of work by two photographers with divergent visions of the American West: Aaron Rothman and Michael Lundgren. Poet and Places Assistant Editor Josh Wallaert offers an introduction not only to their work, but to the problems of aesthetic representation in natural space. As a whole, this is an intellectually complex and visually stunning presentation, and we highly recommend it - the techniques and ideas here can find application across the American landscape. Here is a selection from Mr. Wallaert's introduction; please follow the links to larger, high-resolution examples of the photographs:

By sundown in this Western town, you’ve met an artist, likely an environmental artist, a role synonymous these days with a kind of citizen interpreter of landscape. This is a golden age for geography in art, and its artifacts range from embarrassing to inspired. We embroider birds on pillows and use historical maps for découpage; we also write gorgeous poems whose lines re-enact processes of geological transformation, engineer mobile apps that enable hikers to identify the Latin names of plants, and exhibit photographs of altered landscapes that challenge old notions about the dichotomy of built and natural environment. The artist invites the audience to participate in an active reading and interpretation of landscape. We all want to read the world these days, or, more often, have the world read to us.

These exchanges are thrilling, yes, but also dazzling — as in, they can make you go blind. An afternoon hike with a naturalist friend can feel like immersion in a hypertextual, augmented reality, where the names of wildflowers hang, shimmering, in the desert air. It’s exhausting. I have often longed for the mute world I knew as a child: where a rock was a rock and a tree was a tree, and none of it spoke to me, except through direct perception and experience. Nature offers this still, if we are willing to accept it: the blank, unreadable, unbeautiful, apolitical moment. There have been times, when I found myself staring at exposed rock on the side of a hill, that I have known something about its formation; and times when I was accompanied by a scientist or artist who was obliged to translate. But there have been many more unreadable moments, when I could comprehend nothing in that open face of the world but its presence, when I had only the desire to climb the wall or poke at it with a sharp stick.

 Untitled, 2007; Aaron Rothman

Related Articles:

The Border of Nowhere and Nowhere

Rural Poetry Series: Josh Wallaert

In Brief: Water In The West

Fiction That Crosses the Rural - Urban Line
Rural Studio and the 20K House
Studio H: Designing and Building Skills for Rural Youth

A Jetsonorama Panorama

Many thanks to Gary O'Brien for contacting us and sharing this interactive panorama from Jetsonorama's wheat paste installation in Cameron, Arizona.

What's striking about this technology is that it not only gives depth and dimension to Jetsonorama's work, but it reveals how these installations stand as monuments in a sparsely developed landscape - as these representations of folks from the artist's community float luminously beneath a crystal-clear night sky.

Mr. O'Brien is an award-winning photo-journalist currently working Tuscon, Arizona. His site also features some multimedia reporting on a wide range of subjects, as well as a portfolio of work that meditates on natural space and then applies that same compositional sense to domestic scenes. He also spent a portion of 2005 school year with a class of fifth-graders, and the photo-essays and audio work to emerge from that time is particularly moving - and suggests a collaborative model for other artists and community members. 

Related Articles:

Jetsonorama and Wheat Paste Art on the Reservation

New Art from Jetsonorama's Rez

Jetsonorama and the Moving Planet

4H Royalty: It's Gonna Be A Rock and Roll Blowout

Album art from 4H Royalty's Colossalalia

Today I offer this song for folks' New Year's Eve revelries: "Rock & Roll Blowout" by 4H Royalty. 

I had the chance to meet these musicians at this fall's BIG FEED on the Colorado high plains; "Rock & Roll Blowout" became the unofficial anthem for the weekend, a song that shares the honesty and inventiveness of our hosts at M12 art collective.

Last year 4H Royalty released Colossalalia, a record that the Denver Post noted was "steeped in a uniquely rural kind of swagger and desperation." Self-described as "neither 'revivalist' nor 'purist' in their approach," 4H Royalty's music is not concerned with the normal crucibles of alt.country: stabs at rural "authenticity," put-on twangs, well-tread cliches. Instead, lead singer and lyricist Zach Boddicker creates song structures that alternate between narrative and lyric impulses, between honest emotion and off-kilter snapshots of rural and western life. 

Their live show matched the energy and wit of Colossalalia. 4H Royalty's lineup has settled into place in the last year - with drummer Robert Buehler, multi-instrumentalist Jamie Mitchell and bass player Andrew Porter joining Mr. Boddicker. These musicians are currently working on their new record, and, judging by their live show at the BIG FEED, this is a record to eagerly await in 2012. 

Here's another track from Colossalalia, "The Rosenberg Family Band," a song that, at least as I hear it, takes a tight country rock riff and then offers a surprising metaphor for the country music tradition, and the industry that surrounds it. Enjoy:

In Brief: Water In The West

Unbridged Crossing Destroyed By  Flood, Salt River, 1983; Mark Klett; Places

We have a wonderful range of articles planned for this week on The Art of the Rural and would like to begin today by briefly pointing folks toward yet another excellent feature on the Places site - an enlarging companion to last week's article on the Epicenter project.

In this essay and slideshow, Mark Klett discusses the decade-long project Water In The West, and situates the work of these photographers and critics within the tradition of landscape photography of the American West. From the 1970s forward, these artists anticipated the kinds of discussions that are now occurring across this region. The work of these many artists counters the popular notions of this genre, as Mr. Klett describes it in his introductory paragraph:

For more than a century the landscape photography of the American West was understood as the solitary pursuit of men who lugged large cameras into wild and remote places. The pioneering work of 19th-century photographers such as William Henry Jackson, J.K. Hillers and Carleton Watkins focused on grand landscapes — places that seemed sublime, destined to endure. They began the practice of emphasizing the natural world, a tradition followed later by 20th-century photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. From the start the effects of humanity were almost always framed out of the landscape view.  

The work which followed these photographers sought to correct the iconic romanticism of such views; for The Water in the West group, they acknowledged that "the clash of nature and culture has become the default subject for the landscape photography of our time," and worked to create art that not only contained a pointed political critique, but could, more importantly, create a conversation:

We were hardly in agreement about what role photography should play in changing the social awareness and cultural understanding of water. But we did agree about the central idea: our mission was not to advocate for specific political changes but rather to unite those committed to photographing water as the leading icon of the late 20th-century West. The goal was to produce an archive of photographs that would contribute to an emerging and urgent dialogue about an essential and dwindling resource, a resource that shaped both our natural and social landscapes — and indeed, our survival.

Mr. Klett's essay and extensive slideshow of this group's work can be viewed at Places, and it illuminates some prescient rural-urban concerns. From this article folks can also follow links to similar articles published in Places that consider both the history and the changing face of the American West.

Joe Bageant: Rednecks And the Rural-Urban

Joe with younger brother Mike in 1951; The Daily Yonder 

Folks, I've returned from an inspiring weekend at BIG FEED in Yuma, Colorado -- an event so rich in ideas, music, and art that I'm going to have a great deal to share from it in the coming weeks. 

Until then, I'd like to point folks' attention to a piece that appeared in The Daily Yonder that I consider to be essential reading: it's Lisa Pruitt's thoughts on the life and work of "redneck" writer Joe Bageant. Dr. Pruitt has covered much of the same ground, though from a different disciplinary perspective, on her excellent blog Legal Ruralism, and I can think of no better introduction to the passionate, clear-eyed prose of Joe Bageant. Her response is provocative and deeply moving -- this is a voice and a critique that's missing in large part from our current economic debates, a dose of reality that we all would be wise to consider. I'll be including her insights to just those ends tomorrow.

Below, I'll also include the video embedded at The Daily Yonder:

Native American Hip Hop and Electronic Music

Supaman; from the artist's MySpace page

 Yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered, Taki Telonidis of The Western Folklife Center reported from Crow Nation on a powerful cross-cultural and rural-urban story: the life, times, and music of rapper Supaman. Here's how the piece begins:

In southeast Montana, thousands of miles from the birthplace of hip-hop, a man with the given name Christian Parrish Takes the Gun has been rapping to young people on the Crow Nation reservation. He calls himself Supaman, and he's been merging inner-city music with more local concerns for more than a dozen years.

"Native Americans grasp that culture of hip-hop because of the struggle," he says. "Hip-hop was talking about the ghetto life, poverty, crime, drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy; all that crazy stuff that happens in the ghetto is similar to the reservation life. We can relate to that."

Supaman was courted by record labels in the early 2000's for his brand of gangsta-rap-meets-rez-life, but a fateful encounter on tour led to a conversion experience for the artist; his mature work considers how faith, culture, and place can lead the hip hop genre in new directions. 

Supaman is not alone, though, in creating fresh and provocative music within the Native American community - evidence of further Native hip hop musicians can be found on the Native Hip Hop site. 

More broadly, I'd encourage a visit to Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), a site that provides "a centralized place for emerging and established Indigenous, First Nations, Aboriginal, Inuit, and Métis musicians to share and promote their work." Since debuting this summer, RPM has offered a dizzying array of musicians -- and the site itself is gorgeous, completely interactive, and linked to every relevant social media platform. Across the rural arts (and beyond) we could learn a great deal from how RPM is spreading its message.

Below I'll include Supaman's video for "Sabatage," featuring Deadly Penz. In addition, here's a group I discovered via RPM: A Tribe Called Red. These electronic musicians' work is informed by hip hop, and traditional folk forms, but they have created a style all their own. The track below, "PowWowzers," features the acclaimed drum group Northern Cree as well as samples of comedian Clarence Two Toes:

PowWowzers feat. Northern Cree and Clarence Two Toes by A Tribe Called Red

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition

Farmer-Veteran Coalition founder Michael O'Gorman; Melissa Barnes

I've worked in the organic-farming industry for 40 years. I visited New York not long after 9/11 and came across the statue of a guy beating his sword into a plowshare, and a light bulb went off in my head. In 2007 I talked to some Northern California farmers about creating jobs for returning veterans. From the beginning, there's been something so positive about the concept. It transcends politics. 

          - Michael O'Gorman, as interviewed in Sierra Magazine

I'd like to start of the week with news of The Farmer-Veteran Coalition, a national organization that supports and trains returning veterans seeking a career in sustainable agriculture. Funded by the USDA and a number of other foundations, the FVC has already provided assistance to many veteran-farmers working across the country.

As Coalition founder Michael O'Gorman told Patricia Leigh Brown of The New York Times, the convergence of soldiers returning to civilian life and an aging farming population create a unique opportunity. “The military is not for the faint of heart, and farming isn’t either," he told the Times,  "There are eight times as many farmers over age 65 as under. There is a tremendous need for young farmers, and a big wave of young people inspired to go into the service who are coming home.”

This August the organization announced its first eight Bob Woodruff Farming Fellows along with its inaugural Wells Fargo Fellow. As the titles above suggest, the FVC has been able to not only encourage support within the organic farming community, but beyond, and it should also suggest to folks across rural america that this could be modeled across rural America-- regardless of the specific farming methods or philosophies. 

As this program so powerfully demonstrates, these farmer-veterans not only find a vocation and a means of healing from their combat experiences, but they also help reinvigorate their communities. Folks can read the stories of these extraordinary farmer-veterans on the FVC news page; visit the Fellowship Fund to learn how to share this information with possible candidate or how to donate funds, equipment, or expertise.

Included below is the video of Matt McCue, who discusses how his time spent in rural Iraq opened up a path to a farm apprenticeship in California and a co-ownership of a local CSA:

Rather than thinking of Iraq as the place where my heart was broken and my mind was controlled I prefer to think of Iraq as the place where I discovered the key to my freedom. I prefer to remember the trucks full of watermelons and pomegranates that would pass through our checkpoints. I felt strangely human as I waved cars by with pomegranate seeds stuck to my Kevlar vest.

“I first learned the value of sustainability and the resilience of agricultural communities while serving as an Infantryman in Iraq. In the middle of the chaos of a regime change and a damaged infrastructure the farmers kept growing and kept selling. Seeing this strength is what made me want to be a farmer. [continue reading here]

Much more information on can be found on the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, along with photos, videos and a blog page. Reprinted below is a short excerpt from the FVC mission statement:

The mission of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition is to mobilize our food and farming community to create healthy and viable futures for America’s veterans by enlisting their help in building our green economy, rebuilding our rural communities, and securing a safe and healthy food supply for all.  The coalition seeks to simultaneously assist the farming community by developing a new generation of farmers and to help our returning veterans find viable careers and means to heal on America’s farms.

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition was founded by farmers and food industry leaders with long histories in overcoming the agricultural, managerial, financial, and marketing obstacles to be successful in their work.  The goal of our work is to share our experiences with recent military veterans and to assist them in using their many relevant skills to create a new generation of innovative, ecological, and financially successful young farmers.  Our program has the ability to help veterans reduce risk and become successful farmers by utilizing the many specific and unique resources available to help military veterans starting businesses, buying land, or overcoming disabilities.

Laura McPhee: River Of No Return

1920's Settlers' Cabin At The Edge of a Subdivision; Laura McPhee, courtesy Alturas Foundation

Laura McPhee made these remarkable photographs over several years on successive visits to the Sawtooth Valley [in central Idaho]. River of No Return is organized like a long poem or a piece of music...a stunning look at an actual place, a meditation on rivers, nature, history, the history of landscape photography, of the American West and the idea of the American West. And—while I'm piling theme on theme—the nature of fact and the nature of myth, and how we hold the world in our hands. 

That's Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Haas writing on the work of Laura McPhee, an artist raised in rural New Jersey and whose recent work has chosen cultural environments as various as New York City and Kolkata, India. Many thanks to Texas-based artist Chris Sauter who recently shared news of her River Of No Return series.

Yale University Press published a selection of these photographs in 2008, with a forward by Mr. Haas, an essay by Joanne Lukitsh, and an interview between the artist and Dabney Hailey. As the Press elaborates below, these photographs consider the long history of the West's place as symbol and aspirational landscape within the American consciousness, while also cultivating an honest and engaged connection with the real people and real places of this region:

Photographer Laura McPhee follows in the tradition of 19th-century artistic approaches toward the sublime, relying on a large-format view camera to capture images of exquisite color, clarity, and definition. In images spanning all seasons, McPhee depicts the magnificence and history of the Sawtooth Valley in central Idaho. Her subject matter includes the region’s spectacular mountain ranges, rivers, and ranchlands; its immense spaces and natural resources; the effects of mining and devastating wildfires; and the human stories of those who live and work there. Featured texts set McPhee’s photographs in the context of the work of American predecessors including Frederick Sommer and J.B. Jackson, and discuss her working methods and experiences photographing the evolving landscape.

One Car Passing, Valley Road, Sawtooth Valley, 2003; Alturas Foundation

Ms. McPhee first came to Sawtooth Valley as an artist-in-residence through the Alturas Foundation. As she tells Jennifer Tuohy of The Sun Valley Guide, she was expecting to encounter new questions about the relationship of nature to culture, yet also found herself, in the process of getting to know the place and its people, rethinking her relationship to everything from family history to hunting:

Although she was initially overwhelmed by the magnitude of her subject, those first impressions set the tone for what McPhee describes as work she has been preparing all of her life to make.

When she arrived at the top of Galena Pass her thoughts traveled to her grandmother. Raised by a divorced Ohio schoolteacher, she grew up in the early part of the twentieth century, traveling across the West with her mother and sister, living a subsistence life in rudimentary log cabins. “I stood on Galena and I thought about her passing from one mining town to another as a child. And for me that was the hook, an emotional, autobiographical hook. Of course,” McPhee continued with a laugh, “she didn’t arrive there in a white Suburban.”

With thoughts of her late grandmother floating around in her head, McPhee traveled down to the valley floor (in a white Suburban). “The first thing I saw was the sign that says, ‘Headwaters: River of No Return.’ And it struck me, that’s it. Somebody’s experience passes away and passes forward and you never really know exactly what it was like to stand in that person’s shoes or to have that experience, so it’s always an approximation of that. That’s how you understand someone else’s subjective experience or history. So for me, that name really stuck.

 Illegally Kept Snake River Chinook Salmon With Freezer Burn, Custer County, Idaho, 2005 

Skinned Elk, White Cloud Mountains, Idaho, 2004; Alturas Foundation

Ms. McPhee's site presents many more of these photographs, in a larger, high-resolution format, as does the Alturas Foundation page. This collection of 40 large 6' x 8' prints were also exhibited as Laura McPhee: River of No Return at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

Related Articles:
Chris Sauter's Rural Intallations
The Rural Avant Garde

Jetsonorama And The Moving Planet

We are back today, after a few days away from the site to take care of arts and site-related tasks, with some exciting new work by Jetsonorama, an artist based in the Navajo Nation in Arizona (see our related articles below). Jetsonorama, working in collaboration with 350.org's global Moving Planet gathering last week, has just released a new series of wheat paste murals that express the cultural and environmental costs of the coal industry in the Navajo Nation. Here's the artist writing about the project, from his site:

i started getting ready for this project about 6 weeks ago. thanks goes to friend and co-worker rena yazzie and her brother who provided a big, beautiful lump of coal from the kayenta mine. thanks to josey and jameson for letting me photograph their adorable 5 month old daughter, j. c.

it's been an insightful period for me. if the navajo people and coal were to declare their relationship status on facebook, they'd have to chose the "it's complicated" option. i informally interviewed 16 co-workers and asked them to share with me the first thing that comes to mind when i say "coal." everyone i talked with was raised on the reservation. they all identified coal as a cheap source of fuel, especially for the elders. it's readily available to all tribal members. by way of comparison, a pick up truck full of wood costs $200.00. that same pick up truck loaded with coal would cost only $60.00 and the coal would burn longer.

Jetsonorama continues, reporting that his community recognizes the clear effects of their use of coal in her homes (he cites many instances of respiratory illness) and also remains cognizant of the brute economic facts of the coal extraction industry--that the majority of the power (literal, figurative) and the profits are sent out from Navajo lands towards the metropolises of the West. This movement stands in the face of a series of undeniable statistics about the region, its size and its potential wealth, that suggests that the orb of coal floating over J.C.'s head is a remnant of many older structures of oppression:

the reservation is home to 170,000 people who live in an area that is 27,500 square miles. it's larger than 10 individual states within the u.s. over half of the population lives below the usa defined poverty line despite having land that is rich in coal, natural gas, uranium and water. the unemployment rate is 40%. mining operations on the reservation provide work for a small segment of the population who are able to realize a middle class lifestyle for their families. however, the cost to the families who burn coal in their homes and to the environment is great.

Jetsonorama's site features many more images from this project-- in a larger, high-resolution format. Folks can read more about his work on Brooklyn Street Art as well as The Huffington Post, both of which have reported on Jetsonorama's project with 350.org. Folks may also want to pay a visit to this organization, which was founded by writer Bill McKibben five years ago; 350.org has orchestrated a number of global actions and discussions that have engaged a range of people on the issues of climate change.

Related Articles:

Jetsonorama and Wheat Paste Art on the Reservation
New Art From Jetsonorama's Rez
To New Year
Saturday Portfolio: New Work From Jetsonorama

The 2011 BIG FEED

Photograph from a previous BIG FEED; Richard Saxton

Next month (October 15-16) the M12 art collective will host their annual BIG FEED celebration at the Yuma, Colorado Fairgrounds. Readers of our site may already be familiar with the M12 artists and Richard Saxton's work with his students in Yuma (please see the links below), so we can be certain that this event will be in keeping with the ethos of these artists' work: creative, playful, and forward-thinking.

It's an honor for me to share with everyone that I will be presenting on The Art of the Rural at this year's BIG FEED. I've been asked to offer a kind of "best of" contemporary rural arts and culture, and the invitation will present the opportunity to reflect on what we've covered here on the first two years of the site (two years!). As our coverage of the M12-related work has hopefully demonstrated, I have great respect for these artists and scholars' vision of how aesthetically-adventurous art and architecture can interact in a meaningful and sustainable way with communities. I look forward to sharing more of their artwork, ideas, and connections on this site when I return from Yuma.

I'll include below a list of this year's participants. The full BIG FEED program can be viewed here, and it contains much more information on each artist and presenter. As the schedule demonstrates, there's going to be an extraordinary range of perspectives shared during this two days, so, if folks live in the area, this will be an event not to be missed. That Saturday evening will come to an exciting close with a performance by the legendary alt.country group Blue Mountain.

The BIG FEED: Saturday, Oct. 15-16 at the Yuma County Fairgrounds, Yuma, Colorado.The entry to this event is FREE with a $5 donation and one food item to share!
  The BIG FEED is an annual event and action held by M12. It is a celebration of the regional landscape, experimental art and architecture, food, music, culture and community. It is a forum to connect community members and artists in a casual atmosphere, as well as an opportunity for the larger public to learn more about the groundbreaking work presented by the attending community members, artists, musicians, critics, and curators. Landing somewhere between a family reunion, potluck dinner, symposium, and festival, The BIG FEED is held every second weekend in October. The event is open to the public and free with a $5 donation and one food item to share. For more information on the event and the organization please visit the M12 website.

Saturday, October 15:

2:30PM—DJ Rockcrusher, Maiden Rock, WI (DJ, Country & Western 78’s)
3PM—Vic Anderson, Estes Park, CO (Country & Western, Yodeling musician)
4PM—CU Art Students, Boulder, CO (Visual Art Presentation)
4:30PM—Yuma County Rodeo Queens, Yuma, CO (Presentation)
5PM—Gregory Hill, Joes, CO, native (author of East of Denver)
5:30PM—The Art of the Rural Presentation
6:15—Eric Steen (artist) & Ro Guenzel (Head Brewmaster, Left Hand Brewery)
6:45PM—The BIG FEED (with spit-roasted bison) with music by 4H Royalty
7:30PM—Mimi Ziegler, Los Angeles, CA (editor of loud paper; author of Tiny Houses, New Museums, )
8:15PM—4H Royalty, Denver, CO (full set)  
9:00PM—Blue Mountain, Oxford, MS (full set)

Sunday, October 16:

9:30AM—PANCAKE FEED

10AM—Jami Lunde, Lyons, CO (full set) 

Related Articles:

The M12: A New Vision For The High Plains

Richard Saxton's Vernacular Landscapes

Introducing The Yuma Project

The Yuma Project: Adrianna Santiago

The Yum Project: You Jin Seo

The Yuma Project: Adrianna Santiago

Adrianna with Yuma residents in Shop All; Richard Saxton

Today we have the honor of presenting Adrianna Santiago's work from Yuma. Below we'll feature Ms. Santiago, in some excerpts from our email correspondence, describing her project and her collaborations with the community. For more information on the work of Richard Saxton and his students in Yuma, Colorado, please see our introductory article.

Listening is an important part my artistic process of engaging with any community.  In the case of Yuma, I began with the Yuma Historical Society Museum.  I investigated and researched the history of Yuma, as it relates to agrarian traditions surrounding food.  I curated a small exhibit from the museum collection and presented a small display in the context of the Shop All Grocery Store, also a historic site.  Those historical objects guided our conversations and interactions.  

From there, I spoke directly with community members as they shopped.  The main 
interest from the audience at the Shop All came mostly from the elderly, who recognized and could contribute to the topic of Yuma history and traditions.  The influence of these individuals was essential to the making of the work.  I initiated the creative process through conversation and invited collaborative engagements that were defined by the community. I also asked Shop All patrons to nominate community members who could teach me, through hands-on experience, about Yuma's traditions.

The most inspiring aspect of this work centered around those close community connections. While I began by meeting Judy Rutledge in the Shop All, who nominated her son, the web of connections became very apparent as I embarked upon new lessons with different community members. Organic popcorn planting, cattle herding, wood carving and butter churning were the focused situations that I experienced.

Working in the public space of the Shop All was most eye-opening.  I expected that the display of historic objects would surprise and draw people in, however, many completely overlooked my presence.  This experience caused me to reflect on the idea of being outside of the community.

Communities have become less connected, even in rural areas; the progression of technology has watered down the quality of relationships people have with each other. The family traditions and collective histories embedded in the identity of a locale are becoming mere memories spoken by elders. 

The individuals who founded The Yuma Historical Society Museum (YHSM) in Yuma, CO are dedicated to preserving the history of their farming community; they can be found leading efforts through their work at the YHSM. Founders and members of the YHSM share and archive first-hand narratives about times such as the depression era, stories about land development and the lineage of common families. Ms. Doris Mekelburg and other YHSM members want to ensure that younger generations of the town take responsibility and continue to preserve the cultural identity of Yuma.

I am intrigued by how quickly cultural knowledge seems to be disappearing, despite all “advances” in technology over the past decade. My work in Yuma will begin a journey focused on seeking knowledge and establishing a network where resources can be shared. I want to incorporate new technologies with old practices, without losing ties between people and the land. Eventually, I’d like to create a practical guide book that’s easily accessible for others to take part in so that they may create wholesome communal ties that preserve traditions in their own communities—Yuma, Colorado is the first stop in this process.