Second Nature (after Millet), 2022

Form and Content Gallery, Minneapolis, MN. Photos are by Rik Sferra.

Iconic imagery and earthen media in conversation with 19th-century painter Jean-Francois Millet's The Gleaners, considering representations of land, labor, and the cultural values assigned to them.

"The questions that have fueled my artmaking career keep circling the most basic themes of body, spirit, and land. I am privileged to have been born in farm country, able to observe closely the processes of life: birth (embodiment), the labor required to produce food to nourish our bodies, death and the return to soil-water-air—dust to dust. This essential cycle has not changed in millennia, but the politics and the technologies have, pushing food production to a gargantuan scale that exploits land, animals, and human labor and still is unable to feed the world sustainably.

In truth, we are all 'of the land' and, as I heard someone say, 'Farming is a social practice.' How we treat the land/soil, reflects how we treat each other. Honor is due, all around."