Grateful for You

Happy Thanksgiving!

The late, great, Fred Kirschenmann, a star of sustainable agriculture, and I founded AgArts at Iowa State University 15 years ago. We hoped to have an organization that would imagine and promote a healthy food system through the arts. Really? Through the arts? How?

For several years, I had been writing and touring plays about the Farm Crisis and the present farmscape, immigrant farmers, and farmland transition. We told the history of the habitation of the United States by white settlers and the displacement of the Native Americans. We performed in any space available, from farmers’ barns to the offices of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. We generated discussion and advocated for action on land preservation for food production and conservation.

In 2016, I retired from ISU and took AgArts with me, establishing it as a non-profit. Fred joined the board and we worked hard to find a way to open opportunities for other artists to illustrate agricultural issues and imagine entry points into their solutions. What could help artists better understand the pressures on today’s farmers? What would give artists a close-up, hands-on view of agriculture, but at the same time allow them to grasp the big picture?

We hit upon the idea of artist residencies on farms. So it began. For a week to a month, artists took up residence on farms, learning their successes and their challenges. At the end of a year, the artist would produce an artwork reflecting their experiences, and AgArts would help publicize the pieces, again generating public discussion. In its small way, this dialogue helped heal the urban/rural divide.

AgArts residencies came into being through the generosity of farms like Whiterock Conservancy near Coon Rapids, IA; the Land Alliance Folk School near Oxford, IA; the Mustard Seed Farm north of Ames, IA; Canoe Creek Produce near Decorah, IA; the Alan and Nancy Meyers Farm in Cedar Bluffs, NE; and many more.

Dancers, visual artists, performers and playwrights, musicians, and fiction and non-fiction writers came from Ireland and New York, Texas and Alabama, Michigan and Maine. We weathered the pandemic. We made great connections and celebrated artistic and agricultural work.

We went on to become a hub of activity for the arts and agriculture, nurturing and encouraging other endeavors that promote the intersection of these two practices. Presently, we are launching a bio-sanctuary initiative, conceived of by Russ Mullen, retired ISU agronomy professor, to help citizens establish shelters—whether large or small—for wildlife.

Today I am appreciative of all of you, the readers of both Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices and Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, who have supported these Substack pages. Your readership, and especially your paid subscriptions support AgArts. Your donations go directly into this non-profit. Your donations pay the farmers and artists on AgArts residencies. The money also helps pay our assistant as well as the rent, utilities, phone, and supplies, in our office in Kalona, IA.

Many of you are founding members. Many of you donate extra funds directly to AgArts. I can’t tell you how much this helps.

I’m lucky to be part of Substack. Even luckier to be part of The Iowa Writers Collaborative. Thank you. Thank you for your generosity. I am so grateful.

The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is hosting its annual holiday party Wednesday, Dec. 17, from 7-10 p.m. at The Harkin Institute, 2800 University Ave., Des Moines, on the campus of Drake University.

Paid subscribers to the newsletters of Collaborative members are invited to attend for free. The cost for non-members is $35 per person.

This is a good opportunity to meet writers from the Collaborative and enjoy some holiday cheer.

You can RSVP here.