ARTiculture: Creativity's Crop

Abstract

Agriculture, an art within itself in which the farmer, who can be considered an artist, manipulates the land to create the delicious, curated dinner plate sitting in front of us, “just as a farmer examines their landscape–soil condition, weather patterns, seed variety, consumer interest, tradition and more–an artist, too, must consider the holistic factors that surround and situate their work,” (De Witte, 2016). So many artists and artworks have explored these sentiments that land has to offer through subject matter and uses of materials and mediums. Through my research, I explore several artists and artworks engaging with land and agriculture in order to identify how art and art education can be utilized in connection with the land in order to reengage people with art and its relationship to the land we inhabit. For this research work, I observed, identified, and analyzed an array of artists, designers, farmers, environmentalists, land developers, horticulturalists, students, and organizations, to gather an array of perspectives as to how art’s relationship with the land is viewed. I engaged with several community artworks that explore and celebrate art’s relationship to the local land. I utilized my gathered research to yield a planned unit of study to engage students with the land as they thought about and created art inside and outside the classroom environment. Engaging students with land and agriculture through art, students came to learn the importance of the land and environment we as humans occupy. Creating these conversations and opportunities around art and the land, students came to realize all the amazing possibilities the land has to offer us and why it is important that we as humans give back to our land for in return generations to come can enjoy all our land has to offer.