Matthew Moore Launches Digital Farm Collective

No, this isn’t the same as Farmville, so don’t send him your chickens or cows. Matt Moore (Steamboat 2008 Residency) has been working on a project called the Digital Farm Collective. You may see a video of the project instead of reading. The Digital Farm Collective is an online database, or living library, that shares footage and philosophies on the growth of our produce collected from farmers all over the nation. Matt would like to invite you to support a project that connects us to our food, the farmers that grow it, and all of us to the land.

The foundation of the Digital Farm Collective will be built by collecting images of the most important daily process of agriculture, the growth of our food. Using time-lapse videos of the lifecycles of plants, along with pointed interviews of farmers who have participated in the project, we will build an online network for people all over the world to explore.

You may help by sending the project page link to friends and family who are interested in our food and its future. Send suggestions of farmers you know who would be interested in participating. Send Matt questions you always wanted to ask a farmer! Which edible plants would you like to see growing? Be a local advocate for this global mission and help get the word out on the Digital Farm Collective. Help change or food system through sharing the story of not only the plants, but of the farmers and families that grow them.

Artist in Residence Carol Hummel in India

Colorado Art Ranch (Steamboat 2008 Residency) Carol Hummel spent the month of February creating site specific artwork in Bodhgaya, India, with 30 artists from around the world.  Buddha Enlightened - 2 Be challenged the visiting artists to create work commenting on  the concept of world peace.

Carol created 5 artworks during the event.  In Namaste, Bhai! Namaste, Didi!  (Hello, Brother! Hello, Sister!), Carol examines the ties that bind human beings together by hand-making bracelets and gifting them to everyone she meets. World peace, she believes, must begin with personal connections.  She has given out more that 2,800 bracelets in India during the past year.

Best of Luck, Nuclear World builds upon the Indian tradition of wrapping string around Banyan trees to make wishes come true.  Each day, she wrapped the tree in the colors of the flags of the 9 countries that possess nuclear warheads.  As the strings were wrapped, the colors wove together to form a beautiful fabric, an analogy about the hope that by interweaving our cultures, we can create something of beauty instead of destruction.

In No Shadow of a Doubt Carol collaborated with local village woman to crochet a shadow of a tree.  The black shadow seeping from the landscape serves as a reminder that human actions can drain life and vitality from the environment.

The last two projects were dedicated to focusing attention of the importance of water to the future of humanity.

Nomad Meredith Nemirov show at AndersonRanch Arts Center

by AndersonRanch

Julia and Edward Hansen Gallery
AndersonRanch Arts Center
April 5-May 13, 2011

TREELINES is an installation of ink, watercolor and gouache drawings of Aspen trees that chronicle an experience of a walk through an Aspen grove. Meredeth Nemirov approaches the work through the door of Asian philosophy that that references the sensitivity to the all-encompassing sweep of the seasons that formed, in part, the foundation of Japanese life and culture beginning with the establishment of Kyoto as the capital city in 794. Central to Chinese philosophy is the fundamental notion that nature and humanity are one. Traditional Chinese painting employs monochromatic linear elements and voids and depicts the preference for subject matter derived from nature.

Meredith's narrowing focus has moved her work towards a certain abstraction that is informed by the patterns and linear elements employed by early cartographers to record the land. In a contradictory way, the work has expanded to include visual elements that move in and out of the environment through time and physical space. As Meredith states, "my vision for the work is to convey the idea that nature is not observed from one particular location. Nor is it fixed in time byt has an invisible and intangible aspect (beyond direct experience of the senses) related to sequential changes n cyclic patterns that suggest an underlying purpose."

Meredith received a BFA from Parsons School of Design in NYC. Awards include a Director's Grant from the Colorado Council on the Arts (CCA), the Telluride Council for Arts and Humanites Small Grants and Artist Fellowships for Residencies at the Anderson Ranch in 2005 and the Vermont Studio Center in 2010. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum, Yeshiva University Museum, and in many other group shows.