Crop art
Encyclopedia
Crop art falls into several different categories, all of which employ land and/or what grows from it to create images.
created in mosaic-style. Mosaic
is an ancient technique of making designs, often from bits of tile or glass. Mosaic is also a contemporary art form that is employed across many mediums. Seed pictures, or Crop art could also be seen as a technique of pointillism
, like in painting, and as sharing design elements with textile arts such as needlepoint
. Seed mosaic images are created by fixing vegetable matter
, especially seed
s, to a background. Coleen Sheehy,in Seed Queen quotes a classic text on the subject: Decorating with Seed mosaics, Chipped Glass and Plant materials (first pub.1960) by Elenor Van Rennslaer "...mosaics are tiles, glass, or stones set in mortar. Instead of these you can create a different kind of mosaic using such plant materials as seeds, tiny pods, and flowers" (Sheehy 49).
The Corn Palace
of Mitchell, South Dakota is one expression of this art. The Corn Palace was first built for the 1892 Corn Exposition. Outer walls of the building were -and still are- covered in murals made from multi-colored ears of corn (Sheehy 24); The seed mosaic portraits by Lillian Colton
are also examples. Colton's name "became synonymous with the genre" (Sheehy 2). Colton made many seed portraits, especially of celebrities and she exhibited them in the strictly defined "Crop art" category at the Minnesota State Fair
beginning in 1966, winning many prizes for her work. Rules for entry of Crop art allow "only seeds from Minnesota-grown farm crops or cultivated garden flowers, fruits, and vegetables" with no wild plant seeds permitted. Colton continued to teach and make Crop art until her death at age 95 in 2007 (Sheehy 2). A new generation of Crop, or Seed artists, known as the "Postmodern School of Minnesota Crop Art" (Sheehy 90) is continuing this folk tradition. Some of these artists are "Cathy Camper, Alan Carpenter, Kim Cope, Linda Koutsky, Nancy Loung, Suzy Mears, Laura Melnick, and David Steinlicht" (Sheehy 90). There is a custodial aspect and preservation ethic associated with this plant-based art form; Making Crop art is not only a way preserving and rejuvenating a vibrant folk craft but its practice foregrounds the need to collect, store, and value the lore and varieties of seeds.
The Rose Bowl Parade
floats employ the flowers of plants in a similar collage or mosaic style.
, Earth art, and Environmental art
are similar in scale; in Crop art the canvas is the size of the fields it stretches over.
A major practitioner of this type of Crop art, Earthwork, or Living sculpture
is Stan Herd
. Herd says an early inspiration for his art was the ancient earth drawings called Nazca Lines
after the Nazca people of Peru (Herd 14). One of his first works was the 160 acre (0.6474976 km²) portrait of "Kiowa
War Chief Satanta
" (1981) in southwest Kansas. Herd's work reflects a spiritual connection with the land, and respect for Native American culture (Herd 9). "Little Girl in the wind" (1992, Salina Kansas) was a portrait of an indigenous woman; Carole Cadue, a Kickapoo was the subject of this Earthwork. This portrait was made by burning and mowing, but without plowing the land. (Herd 56) His http://website includes photos of his work and lists some publications where his work has appeared, including a Smithsonian magazine article by Jim Robbins, July, 1994. In Crop Art Herd mentions installation artist Christo observing that "Christo's success hinged on his ability to communicate with people outside the art world" (Herd 16). Herd's work is related to the wider arc of the Prairie Renaissance Movement, a loose grouping of people in the Midwestern United States focused on the preservation and restoration of prairie ecosystems, arts, and culture. From the Prairie Plains Resource Center in Nebraska website to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Arboretum website to Minnesota's Prairie Renaissance Cultural Alliance website to The Native Prairies Association of Texas website concern with the preservation and restoration of prairies ties into the larger categories of prairie preservation
and environmental ethics
; efforts to preserve these prairie ecosystems are a version of In-situ conservation
of the plant genetic materials which make up the palettes of all crop artists.
s. Crop Circles first came to mass media attention during the 1980s after they were noticed in some agricultural fields in southern England (Ency Rel/Spir). Most often the images consist of very large and intricate series of rings and lines formed when standing crops, such as wheat and rye are flattened into patterns. Some attribute these designs to the marks left by landings of extra terrestrial craft because the images are usually very large, appear over a short period of time, and some do not show any visible tracks into or out of the design. These same type of figures are found all over the world; though many do not attribute their manifestation to visitations by alien beings. Crop Circles are sometimes called crop formations, agroglyphs, or pictograms. Some are also created by recognized "landscape artists" for commercial purposes. (Ency of Rel/Spir)
Seed art
One version of Crop art is also called Seed art, a visual artVisual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
created in mosaic-style. Mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
is an ancient technique of making designs, often from bits of tile or glass. Mosaic is also a contemporary art form that is employed across many mediums. Seed pictures, or Crop art could also be seen as a technique of pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
, like in painting, and as sharing design elements with textile arts such as needlepoint
Needlepoint
Needlepoint is a form of counted thread embroidery in which yarn is stitched through a stiff open weave canvas. Most needlepoint designs completely cover the canvas...
. Seed mosaic images are created by fixing vegetable matter
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
, especially seed
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s, to a background. Coleen Sheehy,in Seed Queen quotes a classic text on the subject: Decorating with Seed mosaics, Chipped Glass and Plant materials (first pub.1960) by Elenor Van Rennslaer "...mosaics are tiles, glass, or stones set in mortar. Instead of these you can create a different kind of mosaic using such plant materials as seeds, tiny pods, and flowers" (Sheehy 49).
The Corn Palace
Corn Palace
The Corn Palace is a multi-purpose arena/facility located in Mitchell, South Dakota. It is a popular tourist destination, visited by more than 500,000 people each year. The Moorish Revival building is decorated with Crop art; the murals and designs covering the building are made from corn and...
of Mitchell, South Dakota is one expression of this art. The Corn Palace was first built for the 1892 Corn Exposition. Outer walls of the building were -and still are- covered in murals made from multi-colored ears of corn (Sheehy 24); The seed mosaic portraits by Lillian Colton
Lillian Colton
Lillian Colton was a crop artist whose work, usually portraits of public figures made from agricultural products such as wild rice, hay and timothy seeds glued to cardboard, has been prominently displayed at the Minnesota State Fair for many years...
are also examples. Colton's name "became synonymous with the genre" (Sheehy 2). Colton made many seed portraits, especially of celebrities and she exhibited them in the strictly defined "Crop art" category at the Minnesota State Fair
Minnesota State Fair
The Minnesota State Fair is the state fair of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its slogan is "The Great Minnesota Get-Together." It is the 2nd largest fair in the United States, and the largest state fair in the United States in terms of average daily attendance, though the State Fair of Texas runs...
beginning in 1966, winning many prizes for her work. Rules for entry of Crop art allow "only seeds from Minnesota-grown farm crops or cultivated garden flowers, fruits, and vegetables" with no wild plant seeds permitted. Colton continued to teach and make Crop art until her death at age 95 in 2007 (Sheehy 2). A new generation of Crop, or Seed artists, known as the "Postmodern School of Minnesota Crop Art" (Sheehy 90) is continuing this folk tradition. Some of these artists are "Cathy Camper, Alan Carpenter, Kim Cope, Linda Koutsky, Nancy Loung, Suzy Mears, Laura Melnick, and David Steinlicht" (Sheehy 90). There is a custodial aspect and preservation ethic associated with this plant-based art form; Making Crop art is not only a way preserving and rejuvenating a vibrant folk craft but its practice foregrounds the need to collect, store, and value the lore and varieties of seeds.
The Rose Bowl Parade
Tournament of Roses Parade
The Tournament of Roses Parade, better known as the Rose Parade, is "America's New Year Celebration", a festival of flower-covered floats, marching bands, equestrians and a college football game on New Year's Day , produced by the non-profit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association.The annual...
floats employ the flowers of plants in a similar collage or mosaic style.
Large-scale Crop art; Landscape art
Other views of Crop art are only obtained from the air. Land artLand art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...
, Earth art, and Environmental art
Environmental art
The term environmental art is used in two different contexts: it can be used generally to refer to art dealing with ecological issues and/or the natural, such as the formal, the political, the historical, or the social context....
are similar in scale; in Crop art the canvas is the size of the fields it stretches over.
A major practitioner of this type of Crop art, Earthwork, or Living sculpture
Living sculpture
Living sculpture is any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental...
is Stan Herd
Stan Herd
Stan Herd, American Crop artist creates images, or Earthworks, on large areas of land, especially in Kansas. His work is sometimes called Living sculpture. He plots his designs and then executes them by planting, mowing, and sometimes burning, or plowing the land. Two of Herd's first Kansas...
. Herd says an early inspiration for his art was the ancient earth drawings called Nazca Lines
Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima...
after the Nazca people of Peru (Herd 14). One of his first works was the 160 acre (0.6474976 km²) portrait of "Kiowa
Kiowa
The Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
War Chief Satanta
Satanta
Satanta can refer to:* Satanta , a chief of the Kiowa Native Americans* Satanta, Kansas, a town in the United States...
" (1981) in southwest Kansas. Herd's work reflects a spiritual connection with the land, and respect for Native American culture (Herd 9). "Little Girl in the wind" (1992, Salina Kansas) was a portrait of an indigenous woman; Carole Cadue, a Kickapoo was the subject of this Earthwork. This portrait was made by burning and mowing, but without plowing the land. (Herd 56) His http://website includes photos of his work and lists some publications where his work has appeared, including a Smithsonian magazine article by Jim Robbins, July, 1994. In Crop Art Herd mentions installation artist Christo observing that "Christo's success hinged on his ability to communicate with people outside the art world" (Herd 16). Herd's work is related to the wider arc of the Prairie Renaissance Movement, a loose grouping of people in the Midwestern United States focused on the preservation and restoration of prairie ecosystems, arts, and culture. From the Prairie Plains Resource Center in Nebraska website to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Arboretum website to Minnesota's Prairie Renaissance Cultural Alliance website to The Native Prairies Association of Texas website concern with the preservation and restoration of prairies ties into the larger categories of prairie preservation
Prairie
Prairies are considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type...
and environmental ethics
Environmental ethics
Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world...
; efforts to preserve these prairie ecosystems are a version of In-situ conservation
In-situ conservation
In-situ conservation is on-site conservation or the conservation of genetic resources in natural populations of plant or animal species, such as forest genetic resources in natural populations of tree species...
of the plant genetic materials which make up the palettes of all crop artists.
Crop Circles
The term Crop art can also stretch to cover formations known as Crop CircleCrop circle
A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented...
s. Crop Circles first came to mass media attention during the 1980s after they were noticed in some agricultural fields in southern England (Ency Rel/Spir). Most often the images consist of very large and intricate series of rings and lines formed when standing crops, such as wheat and rye are flattened into patterns. Some attribute these designs to the marks left by landings of extra terrestrial craft because the images are usually very large, appear over a short period of time, and some do not show any visible tracks into or out of the design. These same type of figures are found all over the world; though many do not attribute their manifestation to visitations by alien beings. Crop Circles are sometimes called crop formations, agroglyphs, or pictograms. Some are also created by recognized "landscape artists" for commercial purposes. (Ency of Rel/Spir)