
Crop art is an environmental art practice using plants and seeds in the landscape to create statements, marks and/or images.
Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes (Dénes Ágnes; born 1931 in Budapest) is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of media—from poetry and philosophical writings to extremely detailed drawings, sculpt ...
, Matthew Moore (artist),
Dennis Oppenheim
Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the na ...
and
Stan Herd are practitioners of Crop art. Some works of
Land art
Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mo ...
, and
Earth art are similar in scale, and can be seen only from aerial viewpoints.
Historical precedents
One
folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...
version of crop art is called seed art, a
visual art
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and texti ...
form created in
mosaic
A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...
-style, similar to the technique of
pointillism
Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism ...
in painting, or
needlepoint
Needlepoint is a type of canvas work, a form of embroidery in which yarn is stitched through a stiff open weave canvas. Traditionally needlepoint designs completely cover the canvas. Although needlepoint may be worked in a variety of stitches, ...
textiles. Seed mosaic images are created by fixing
vegetable matter
Vegetables are edible parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. This original meaning is still commonly used, and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including flowers, fruits, ...
, especially
seed
In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds ...
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
[Eleanor Van Rennslaer ''Decorating with Seed mosaics, Chipped Glass and Plant materials'' Kessinger Publishing, LLC (July 23, 2009)] "...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).
An example is the
Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, that 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. Her seed portraits of celebrities were exhibited in the strictly defined "Crop art" category at the
Minnesota State Fair
The Minnesota State Fair is the state fair of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Also known by its slogan, "The Great Minnesota Get-Together", it is the largest state fair in the United States by average daily attendance and the second-largest state f ...
beginning in 1966. 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 97 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.
In Los Angeles, the
Tournament of Roses Parade
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
# One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
floats employ the flowers of plants in a similar collage or mosaic style.
Crop circles
The term Crop art might be used to describe formations known as
crop circle
A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing ...
s.
["Crop Circles." Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development. 2005. SAGE Publications. 20 Nov. 2009. . Eltjo H. Haselhoff] 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
A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...
. Some are also created by recognized "landscape artists" for commercial purposes.
See also
*
Seed Savers Exchange
References and footnotes
{{reflist
External links
Crop Art Seed Mosaic
Visual arts media
Environmental art