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Starr Earthwork 2002                      

Global Positioning Systems (GPS)

News Coverage of Starr Earthwork

GROWING ART IN THE FIELDS
Link to audio recording:  http://michiganhumanities.org/culturelink/radio/earthwork.ram

Tamar Charney

September 16, 2002

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? (hahaha) You're in a farm community. I take a lot of harassment."

It Murphy's job to actually make this art project grow from drawings given to him by an artist. The artist had the vision and but not the technical know how to make it work.

". . . Nuts. 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 effects shorelines but this summer he's been using the high tech tools of his trade to map an artists 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." (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 Rizzolaocreate 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."

Rizzolo 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 Rizzolo has started called the "World Peace Art Initiative." Over the last 2 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 let get that 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 a unusual but strangely satisfying experience.

"They know what their 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 a 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 Lake Radio Consortium I'm Tamar Charney.

© 2002 Great Lakes Radio Consortium

News Coverage of Starr Earthwork