Exploring the changing nature of farming through visual arts, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum presents its new multidisciplinary project, "Farming in the 21st Century," today through Saturday, May 24.
The Center has examined what's on the dinner table and invites the Wood River Valley community to share in its observations through an exhibition of contemporary art as well as other disciplines. The Center's artistic director, Kristin Poole, said the farming exhibition is part of The Center's commitment to present programs on issues relevant to the community.
"The project also provided an opportunity to partner with Idaho's Bounty and Community Rising, two local nonprofits focused on issues of food and sustainability," Poole said.
The Center will present several classes and events, including a class on growing better vegetables with the Sawtooth Botanical Garden on Thursday, April 9, a free panel discussion on Idaho farming today with local growers on Thursday, April 16, a trip to Hagerman Valley for a greenhouse tour, on Saturday, April 18, a cooking class with Rasberry's Catering on Saturday, May 2, a free panel discussion on eating in the 21st Century with Community Rising on Thursday, May 21, and an Idaho's Bounty Locavore's Festival by seven local chefs at participating restaurants.
Poole curated The Center's new show with photographer Julie Moos and painters Michael Gregory and Geoff Krueger.
"I started with Julie Moos, who in 2001 and 2002 made a series of monumental scale, formal portraits of pairs of farmers such as husbands and wives, fathers and sons and brothers who all use Monsanto products in the Midwest," Poole said. "Her model for her documentary approach was James Agee's and Walker Evans's work in 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' (1941). It's never explicit in her photos, but there is this underlying sense of a disconnect between the people and the setting."
Poole said she has admired Gregory's realist paintings of barns, silos and country churches for a long time.
"They are beautiful, haunting pictures, and even though there are no animals or people in them, it's clear that these are farm buildings," Poole said. "If you grew up in the Midwest like I did, then these buildings seem to be a natural part of the landscape, not an intrusion like a skyscraper would be."
Krueger, a Boise-based painter, exhibits work that reveals his personal response to growing up in Southern California and his memories of lush fields of fruits and vegetables that are now suburban strip malls.
"There's something almost ghostlike about the figures in his paintings," Poole said. "They sort of disappear around their knees, which matches his memory of seeing workers kneeling or bent over amid crops so that the lower part of their body wasn't visible."
In addition, Poole included Montana-based artist Tracy Linder, who grew up on a farm near Billings. She received her MFA the same year her family lost their farm and much of her art is an homage to family farming, and to a way of living and producing food that she believes is disappearing.
"Her art is about the labor of farming," Poole said. "She takes dirty work gloves, worn overalls and tools that are crucial to farm work and treats them like devotional objects."
The Center is displaying shovels that Linder fashioned out of beeswax and leather gloves coated with resin and wax.
The Center in Ketchum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. In addition, the gallery will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 28. Admission to the gallery is free and free exhibition tours are given every Tuesday at 2 p.m. or by appointment. A special evening gallery tour will be held on Thursday, April 16, at 5:30 p.m.
A closing celebration will be held on Saturday, May 23, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. with drinks and hors d'oeuvres from local producers and a tasting and award presentation for The Center's local canning competition. The gallery will stay open until 8 p.m. for Gallery Walk.
For more information about the multidisciplinary project "Farming in the 21st Century," visit sunvalleycenter.org or call 726-9491.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
"Day Work" by Geoff Krueger. Oil on canvas at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum.
