Farm Tools Project

FARM TOOLS PROJECT
Michel Droge & Sarah Loftus
August 31 — October 1, 2020
On view in Flex Space Gallery and online on Emery’s website. 

Before your gallery visit, please check our website’s VISIT page for updated open hours. All visitors are required to wear masks and maintain social distancing while in Emery and the Flex Space Gallery.

The Farm Tools Project is a visual exploration of the use of hand tools on small Maine farms and the exchanges that take place between farmers and the land. Throughout the past year, artist Michel Droge and archaeologist Sarah Loftus traveled to farms around the state making cyanotypes (a 19th century form of photography) of tools with people in their fields, barns, and greenhouses. They spoke with farmers about the significance of the tools they use, their connection to the land, and the challenges small farms face in today’s environment.

As an archaeologist, Sarah has been researching American farming and the material culture of daily life for many years and Michel is a research-based artist with a socially engaged practice that addresses the environment and climate change. They decided to collaborate to look at the material choices people make on small farms, the labor of it, and the objects they pick up each day to grow food and maintain sustainable relationships with the land.

Tools are embedded with their own histories and stories, extensions of ourselves and partners in our complicated relationships with the world. They have their own animus, but also speak to humanity’s collective capacity for invention and ingenuity. As with farming, cyanotypes are produced with sunlight and water and the ghostly beauty speaks to generational relationships with the land and the enduring resilience of small farms facing a suite of environmental, social and industrial challenges.

If you are interested in purchasing Farm Tools Project artwork, please contact Sarah Loftus at seltreehouse@gmail.com. Fifty percent of artwork sales proceeds will go to Real Farmer Care, which raises funds for self-care for farmers who need it, @realfarmcare. The remaining fifty percent will go towards the publication of a book for the project.

The Farm Tools Project is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission and by the Kindling Fund, a grant program administered by SPACE as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regranting Program.

Farms:

Black Kettle Farm, Lyman — Burke Hill Farm, Cherryfield —College of the Atlantic’s Peggy Rockefeller Farm, Mount Desert Island — Four Season Farm, Harborside — Frith Farm, Scarborough — Girard Farm, Lyman — Hurricane Valley Farm, West Falmouth — Ironwood Farm, Albion — Villageside Farm, Freedom

More information on the artists:

Michel Droge is a painter, printmaker and educator whose work engages with the environment and the human condition in an era of uncertainty. Their public engagement projects involve field research and collaboration with conservation and environmental groups such as Maine Audubon Society and the Island Institute. They are a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Award and three Maine Arts Commission Grants. Their recent exhibitions include the Maine Audubon Society, University of Maine Machias, Bates College Art Museum, and The Cue Art Foundation in NYC. Michel has a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Maine College of Art.

Sarah Loftus is an archaeologist at Northeast Archaeology Research Center in Farmington, Maine with a focus on the 19th and 20th century history of the United States and people’s relationships with the environment through material culture, labor and technology. She moved to Maine from Texas and spent two years working on vegetable and dairy farms as part of an ongoing interest in American farming. Sarah has an MA in Archaeology from University College
London and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University.