Seed saving is a topic Rachel
Breen’s explored from a number of different angles over the past four years. The
practice preserves heirloom seeds by collecting them and then sowing them, with
the goal of keeping the plants in circulation. Seed saving speaks to the very
essence of sustainability. In husbanding what we have inherited from the past
and passing it onto future generations, we are fulfilling a sacred duty.
We’ve all heard about
the threat from GMOs, but as Rachel explains there are other factors negatively
impacting our agricultural biodiversity. “One of the problems is that we’ve
lost a lot of edible plants over the last 100 years,” she says. “Many farms, in
their effort to provide a particular kind of tomato or apple to a grocery
store, have only planted certain varieties, letting other ones disappear.”
Prior to arriving for
her VCCA residency, Rachel visited Association Kokopelli, the largest seed saving
organization in France, where she made drawings of the seeds in the collection.
“In all my research about seed saving what I’ve seen are storerooms with
shelves full of brown glass jars or plastic containers or plastic bags. There’s
nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to depict the seeds in really important
containers, like treasure chests, because that’s how precious I want to say they
are.” This sense of value is evident in the very nomenclature: an heirloom
being something valuable passed down through the generations.
While in France, Rachel also
went to the Louvre to source rare and beautiful containers: jewel encrusted
snuffboxes, ornate reliquaries and so forth. Influenced by folk art, her
renditions, which she’s been working on while at VCCA, are not completely
representational. The project has forced her to think about things she hasn’t
thought about in years like composition and dimension. She’s fiddled with the colors
using brightly hued pencils and played with their shapes a bit before pairing
them with a particular heirloom varietal like black Aztec corn, Japanese millet
or Bloomsdale spinach.
Recent research has
revealed the Cherokees carried black bean seeds on the Trail of Tears. Her next
challenge is to do a drawing about this. “When you think about the Trail of
Tears how awful it was,” says Rachel. “And yet, they carried these seeds. It
tells you how important they were, and in a sense they represent the future and
hope. How can I do justice to the seed and to the people that carried them?”
The work Rachel’s been
doing at VCCA is a departure for her. Like many Fellows, she has been able to
use her residency to push herself in a more experimental direction, exploring
new ways of expression. Typically, Rachel works in a non-representational mode,
with a major piece of equipment being an unthreaded sewing machine which she
uses to punch holes in paper. Sometimes she runs the paper through repeatedly
so it falls apart and then she sews the pieces back together. Other times, she
uses the sewing machine needle to make a stencil. She shakes powdered charcoal
through the holes to produce a design on a surface, or, in ephemeral installations,
directly onto a gallery wall.
This fall, funded by a
grant from Minnesota, Rachel bought an airbrush and reproduced the effect of her
charcoal stencils on garages in her neighborhood as part of The Heirloom
Project. The medium was well suited for the delicate heirloom plants and seeds
she created; their delicacy and fragility neatly evoking the precious plants and seeds they represented. Rachel led walking tours of the murals, teaching participants
about seed saving and giving out free seeds donated by the Seed Savers
Exchange. She encouraged people to both plant those seeds and also to save seeds
from their gardens to be placed in a seed library at the local community
center.
“My work has always been
about social issues and political issues, but I get really tired of art that’s
just critical,” says Rachel. “It’s really easy to complain. I’m interested in
work that can be political, but also offer solutions. Seed saving is such a cool
thing,” she continues. “Because it’s affirming—it’s such a positive way to be
political and to make a point. It’s a very optimistic act to me, very hopeful
about the future. Seed saving is something that affects everyone and it’s
something anyone can do. It’s not only cheaper than buying new seeds it also
ends up making the plants stronger because you tend to save the seeds from the
hardiest plants, and this helps to cultivate that strength and the plants therefore
can adapt to our changing environment.”
Rachel’s next project
focuses on the relationship between the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the Ranza
Plaza Fire in Bangladesh. Because she works with a sewing machine, she feels a
special kinship with the workers in both these tragedies. Thanks to a grant,
Rachel and her collaborator, a writer, will be going to Bangladesh in February
to meet with survivors of the Ranza Plaza fire, go to the site and visit other
garment factories.
“There’s something very
intimate about working with the stitch, because almost all humans throughout the
word wear a stitch close to their body,” she says. “It’s so common, human and
intimate. I want to get people thinking about that and who makes our clothes. I don't see getting
people to buy fair trade as a viable option for many of us. But I am
interested in coming up with specific actions people can take to address the
terrible working conditions garment workers face."
