Classroom use

Arts & Activities, June, 2004 by Marjorie Cohee Manifold

THINGS TO LEARN ABOUT STAN HERD

* Stanley James Herd was born in 1950 to a farming family of southwestern Kansas. He grew up watching his parents, grandparents and neighbors communing with the land as if it were a living thing. These rural folk taught him to respect how each piece of earth responds or interacts differently to particular plants and weather conditions. He came to think of the land as bountiful and life-giving so long as its cyclical ecological and seasonal needs were respected.

* Despite his upbringing, Herd did not imagine himself growing up to become a farmer. He dreamed of becoming an artist. During junior high school, he took a "study-at-home" art course and practiced drawing in his spare time. Later, he received an art scholarship and studied at the State University in Wichita. His instructors introduced him to the world of modern non-representational art, but Herd did not feel entirely comfortable working in this style. Perhaps this was because he recognized the artists and artworks he studied had been largely inspired by urban, rather than rural, experiences.

* One afternoon, Herd took a plane ride over Dodge City to photograph, from above, a Pop/Op art design that he had painted on the wall of a building. While in the air, he watched as a tractor pulling a plow cut a dark line of earth across an expanse of ground. The imaged experiences of his youth--from the quilts made by women in his family and community to a remembered TV documentary about Nazca desert drawings--crone together in his mind. He resolved to create an image on the land using the materials, tools, and processes which generations of his ancestors had employed for their livelihood.

* Sam Herd's first earth project, created in 1976, was a 160-acre portrait of Chief Satanta of the Kiowa Indian nation. In the late 19th century, Chief Satanta had been an important symbol of resistance to European-American encroachment of Native hunting ground. Herd felt a close rapport with the Native Peoples of the Midwest. For just as Chief Satanta had seen the rich prairie, capable of supporting vast herds of buffalo, give way to waving wheat fields, Herd believed himself to be witnessing the destruction of the earth's fertility from too-aggressive fanning practices and a general disregard of the natural environment.

THINGS TO DO IN SCHOOL

* Compare Iowa Countryside with New York Countryside, created in 1994 out of one acre of land in the Old Pennsylvania Square Railroad Yard on Manhattan Island's Upper West Side (see photo, page 40). The New York landscape was created in the style of Regionalist artist, Thomas Hart Benton. During their era, Benton and Wood had created art that was very different from the Modernist art acclaimed by mainstream art critics. For this reason, they were often regarded as outsiders to the elite art world. According to Herd (Bosami, 2003), choosing Bentou as stylistic inspiration for New York Countryside was a way of expressing his own sense of status as an "outsider" to the urban art world.

* Consider" (1) How is Herd's work in the tradition of the earlier Regionalist artists? (2) How is Herd's work in the tradition of Post-modernism? In what ways might it be considered outside the Post-modern movement? Which is the stronger influence? (3) "Crop art" describes the medium Herd uses but does not suggest the larger ideas he attempts to convey through his work. Make a list of these ideas and of the visual characteristics evidenced in his imagery. How would you stylistically classify Herd's work? If you were to invent a name for a new category that describes Herd's work overall, what would it be?

* Over the past century, the increasing hardships of farm life contrasted with the appealing advantages of city life have led many rural people, including artists, to leave the country in order to seek work in urban centers.

Stan Herd's huge crop artworks have helped turn the attention of the art world back to the country. They bring a sense of pride to the rural communities that support them and the farmers who collaborate in their creation. Urban-dwelling tourists who visit crop-art sites contribute to local agri-tourist economies. In the end, those rural folk, urbaniles, art lovers and critics who view Herd's works all may be brought to greater awareness of mankind's neglect and abuse of the environment through aggressive agricultural practices, urban encroachment, and the general disregard of commercial progress.

* Consider how Herd brings attention to rural life and attracts tourists to where his artworks are placed, as well as how these bring a sense of pride to people of the local community. Then consider the following:

1. Who are the sculptors, muralists, artists or craftspeople of your community? How do their works and/or presence benefit the community? Do they share their works with the community? If so, how?

2. Make a list of the types of art that are made by members of your community. Do the art materials or processes they use benefit, harm or neutrally affect the natural environment? Explain your answer.