Winter Bones: an art exhibit inspired by Harrison Farm

Throughout my entire life, I have had a deep love of animals.  In my childhood, I felt much more comfortable with animals than with humans, and I learned to understand animal behavior.  As an only child, my playmates were the cats, dogs, horses, sheep, and goats who lived on our farm.  I created elaborate stories about them, and spent as much time with them as possible.  I played with worms & minnows in the creek that ran by the farm, and dreamed up adventures about being an explorer of waterways.  My grandfather indulged my love of animals by helping me heal & then release an injured owl and an orphan skunk.  I was also fascinated by what made an animal.  Whenever our dogs would bring home something they had hunted, I would look at the bones & the parts of these groundhogs & raccoons to understand their bodies.  When an animal passed away, I was curious to understand why it occurred, and would ask my grandfather to explain these mysteries.  I had no idea that these early traits would prepare me to be a farmer, and a butcher, and -- rather unexpectedly -- an art curator.

Since my childhood, I have had a habit of picking up feathers and shoving them in my ponytail.  This has led to quite a collection, thanks to the beautiful roosters of Harrison Farm.  I have always been fascinated by skulls & bones, and have spent several years figuring out successful means of composting & sunbleaching them.  For the last year, I have worked to master hide preparation for tanning.  With my "Harrison hoarding tendencies", this has led to a large collection of bones & skulls & feathers & hides.

I have a habit of sharing with friends all my crazy random dreams for what the farm could do: "I bet we could have yoga classes on the farm", "I want to have open houses on the farm where people can bring their two-legged kids to meet my four-legged kids", "someday I want to write a children's book about Finn Lambkins", "I have this dream of an art exhibit where different artists interpret skulls", "I bet we could turn the old airplane hangar into an event space".  The amazing thing is that in the last few years, I have found myself surrounded by remarkable people who actually believe in my crazy goat-filled dreams and are helping to make them come true.

My friends Stephanie & Dana -- two of my very favourite people in this entire world -- are helping to make my dream of an art exhibit celebrating animal agriculture possible!  We are releasing the artist call information first to our friends.  Each of us believes deeply in community, and we are hopeful to fill the exhibit Winter Bones with pieces from our own creative friends.  Information on the artist call follows this blog piece, and I encourage my artistic friends to consider being a part of this show.  We are scheduled to open at Wild Goose Creative gallery on November 4th, and the exhibition will be up for much of November.  

If all runs according to the current schedule, the opening will fall one year & one day after the auction of my grandparents' farm.  It is super exciting to realize how far the farm has come in the space of just a year, thanks to the wonderful people who support the farm & believe in its potential.  As last winter crept up, I was so excited about finally being able to make decisions on our farm -- but I was also very worried that the depression which had consumed me the previous winter would return.  I have always struggled with winter, as it reminded me of death & despair & alienation.  I knew that if I was going to survive -- if I was going to be able to make the farm survive -- I had to find a sense of peace with the changing season.  

One day, I found a quote that gave me the perspective to re-evaluate my feelings toward the season of winter: "Winter lays bare the bone structure of the earth."  I began to look at the bare trees, the still pastures, and the worn ground as the bone structure of the farm.  I stopped looking at the stillness of my own solo life in winter as loneliness, but instead as the foundation of my existence.  The more I changed my perspective from winter being a time of death to winter revealing the bone structure of the world, I began to see the stream-lined beauty of the season and the possibilities to build creatively upon it.  As I am wont to do, one day I began pontificating with my friends about these lessons, and how they impacted my view of the farm, and all the ridiculous dreams I had for introducing my community to animal agriculture, including an art exhibit . . . And then, my two amazing friends Dana & Stephanie told me that they could make this dream come true!  It is humbling to have found my people who view all my eccentricities & crazy dreams as good things, and my heart is completely full of gratitude!

DESCRIPTION

Winter Bones, the November gallery show at Wild Goose Creative, explores the seasonal transition from autumn to winter. Inspired by Harrison Farm, Winter Bones examines the way cold weather exposes the bare structure of nature. Leaves fall, harvests are completed, and the cycle of life continues. Winter lays bare the bone structure of the earth, and the circle of life leaves behind the bones of animals.

When Katherine Harrison's great-great-grandfather helped her great-grandparents to purchase the farm in 1927, it was a typical Midwestern farm of its era. They never could have imagined that ninety years later the farm would host yoga sessions with goats, serve as a location for students to gain hands-on animal handling skills, or be operated by one of their female descendants. Throughout her life, Katherine Harrison has forged a deep relationship with her animals, learning the need to respect life in all its cycles. As the fifth generation of the Harrison family at this particular farm, Katherine strives to honor the lessons which her grandparents & her mother instilled in her as she finds opportunities to share with others her love of animal agriculture.  One of the tenets of Harrison Farm is to value each creature of the farm for what it contributes, and thus using all parts of an animal to honor its life: skulls are bleached, hides are tanned, and feathers are re-purposed.

Wild Goose Creative is looking for artists who would like to contribute Winter Bones. The works will use Harrison Farm as inspiration, using a collection of bones, skulls, feathers, or tanned leather paired with a story about the farm or the animal itself. The bones themselves are treated as raw materials, and can be selected by the artist and bought for $15-40 ($150 for tanned leather and $1 per feather) per set from the farm's collection. If your project doesn't require physical materials (for example, photography of the farm), you can set up a time with Katherine to visit the farm.

Wild Goose is looking for artists in disciplines such as mixed media, painting, photography, assemblage or other. With your submission of interest, please include your website or 3-5 images of your past work and a 2-3 sentence description of what you intend to create.