Farmers in the Midwest grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets, and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a farmer in Michigan has been growing art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney explains:
Transcript
The agricultural fields of the Great Lakes region grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets,
and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a field in Michigan has been growing
art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports.
(natural sounds: moving and walking through crops, sounds of birds and crickets,
and distant traffic)
Mike Murphy has been farming land near Albion Michigan for almost 30 years. He grows corn
and soybeans in neat orderly rows. This year though he’s been working for an artist on a 37 acre
field not far from his. But instead of neat orderly rows, he’s been planting, growing, and mowing
the crop fields into the shapes of stars, moons, and circles. Its been his job to take an artist’s
concept and literally plant it something that seemed odd to him and to his neighbors.
“I thought you guys got to be nuts. It’s like the people who come drive by like the other night
when I was out here . . . What’s this guy doing out here driving around in a circle in the middle of
field? (ha ha ha) You’re in a farm community. I take a lot of harassment.”
It’s Murphy’s job to actually make this art project grow from drawings given
to him by an artist. The artist had the vision but not the technical
know-how to make it work.
“You know they thought I could plant those stars with my planter, but no, I can’t. My
input’s been that they know how to do it on paper, but I know how to do it out here.”
To create these designs in the field, Mike Murphy has had to work with people he doesn’t usually
come in contact with. Such as the man at work on the other side of the field. He’s walking
around wearing a yellow plastic satellite receiver on his back and holding a Global Positioning
System or GPS in his hands.
“This in one of the corners of the triangle, the metal stake.”
This is Dave Lemberg, a Professor of Geography at Western Michigan University. Usually he
spends his summers researching how development affects shorelines, but this summer he’s been
using the high tech tools of his trade to map an artist’s design onto the earth.
“Artists and scientists certainly can do some interesting things together.”
He’s using the GPS to methodically plot out the outlines of stars, circles, and other patterns in the
field.
“Okay, we’re getting close. I feel like I’m doing the time warp. . . step to the left, step to the
right. And we’re here. “X” marks the spot.” (sound of banging stakes fade under)
At each point, geographer Dave Lemberg places color coded flags on the
field so that farmer Mike Murphy knows where to plant, disc, and mow.
Both men are out here helping an artist named Lou Rizzola create what is
being called the Starr Earthwork.
“Designs with soil – it is a remarkable thing to watch growth and texture and pattern come from
different crops but by cutting and arranging patterns we’re designing with soil in a way.”
Rizzola created this project as a way to bring people from different walks of life together to do
something creative.
“There’s an opportunity for more people to participate in the creative experience and, uh,
sometimes we do have a tendency to get locked up in our lofts with our berets and fairly isolated,
but I think today’s art includes many, many people.”
This creation has a political message. It is the first project in a program Rizzola has started called
the “World Peace Art Initiative.” Over the last two years he’s been meeting with artists from
Australia, China, Italy, Norway, and elsewhere to develop plans for projects like this all across
the globe. He says it’s a way to use art to teach people from different backgrounds that they can
come together and work in peace and harmony.
“So are we ready to start? Can we start to get the figures? We have a lot of people here and if we
all get at it I think we can get the three figures done and we’ll be in good shape.”
Over the next few hours, this unlikely team of artists, geographers, and farmers will puzzle out
how to mark off and then get rye grass to grow in patterns in the center of the field.
“So if we did the geometric things today, the flowy thing could be done later.”
“Right, you can put some fluidity into my basepoints.”
“Okay, so let’s work on your basepoints, we”ll work with flags…
we’ll pull this out of the way.”
None of these guys have ever before grown crops in the shape of stars, moons, and the like. For
farmer Mike Murphy, getting a chance to work out in the field with geographers and artists has
been an unusual but strangely satisfying experience.
“They know what they’re doing and it’s realizing their input. Not knowing the farm part of it, what
I can do, or the way it can be done, the equipment you can use – it’s something you’ve never done
in your life, probably never will do again, that’s real enjoyable.”
When the designs in the field are finished there will be celebrations here featuring music,
dancing, and exhibits of peace banners. And there will be balloon rides. That’s how visitors to
the Starr Earthwork get a bird’s eye view of the art Mike Murphy has been growing.
“Lou, you get 8 or 9 people with weedeaters and paint the outside perimeter of this.”
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.