Stan Herd (born 1950 in

Protection, Kansas Protection is a city in Comanche County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 498. History Protection was founded in 1884. Popular support for a protective tariff in the 1884 presidential election ca ...

) is an American

crop art Crop art is an environmental art practice using plants and seeds in the landscape to create statements, marks and/or images. Agnes Denes, Matthew Moore (artist), Dennis Oppenheim and Stan Herd are practitioners of Crop art. Some works of Land art ...

ist and

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

who creates images, or earthworks, on large areas of land, especially in

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

. His work is sometimes called

living sculpture Living sculpture is any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental. There are several different types of living sculpture techniques, including topiary (prune plant ...

. He plots his designs and then executes them by planting, mowing, and sometimes burning, or plowing the land. He is associated with the Prairie Renaissance Movement. Two of Herd's first Kansas installations were the portraits of

Kiowa Kiowa ( ) or Cáuigú () people are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe and an Indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colora ...

War Chief

Satanta Satanta (IPA: eˈtʰæntə (Set'tainte ( éʔ.tˀã́j.dè or ''White Bear'') ( – October 11, 1878) was a Kiowa war chief. He was a member of the Kiowa tribe, born around 1815, during the height of the power of the Plains Tribes, probably ...

(1981) and

Will Rogers William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma ...

(1983). These artworks can be seen in Herd's 1994 book on crop art. Herd's website includes photos of his work and a list of some of the media coverage of his various projects, including an article in '' Smithsonian'' magazine and

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's ''

World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

'' magazine (1988). An installation Herd completed in 1994, ''Countryside'', which was an image of a pastoral Kansas landscape on an acre of property owned by Donald Trump in New York City, was the subject of an independent film by Chris Ordal called ''Earthwork''. The drama stars Oscar-nominated actor John Hawkes as Herd. The film's Kansas premiere, in Herd's adopted hometown of

Lawrence Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparator ...

, took place September 10, 2010, at the

Lawrence Arts Center The Lawrence Arts Center is located in Lawrence, Kansas Lawrence is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Intersta ...

. ''Earthwork'' won awards at more than 50 film festivals in the United States alone. Filmed on location in Lawrence and New York City, it tells the true story of Herd's transformation of a large, trash-strewn, barren lot near a graffiti-laced underground railway tunnel inhabited with the homeless, into ''Countryside''. Herd made several trips to Havana to create ''Rosa Blanca'' in 2001, an image of a white rose in honor of the 19th-century Cuban poet José Martí. In 2008, Herd partnered with Papa John's pizza to create a crop circle in a wheat field outside Denver airport to celebrate the company's launch of whole wheat crust pizza. The effort won numerous awards. Herd's work has been seen on ''

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'';

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's ''Breakfast Time''; ''

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''; ''

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'';

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's ''

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''; and

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's ''

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''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Herd, Stan American contemporary artists Land artists Living people 1950 births