Campus Sculpture Tour

Sally Kuzma

CROP ROTATIONS FOR GRINNELL (REMEMBER THE SEED GERM), 2005
20 tiles, 24 x 24 x ¾ inches;
2 partial tiles; total, 372 x 78 inches
C-prints between Plexiglas
Commissioned by Faulconer Gallery and Center for Prairie Studies

Upon moving to the Midwest, artist Sally Kuzma began a series of botanical works to explore and document the region by means of its plant life and ecology. She was also curious about the wide-open spaces, a decided contrast to the terrain of her native New York. Some of her explorations—images of plant life digitally manipulated to create striking geometric patterns—were shown at Grinnell’s Roots of Renewal exhibition in 2003.

Crop Rotations resulted from a trustee request. After the dedication of Rose Hall in 2003, trustees expressed concern that the wall in the lounge was too large to be left completely blank, and thought that it could benefit from the addition of art. Kuzma was asked to formulate a proposal for a piece to put in the lounge. Kuzma planned to create a work that would not only stand up to the light streaming through the lounge’s numerous windows, but also play off it without being upstaged by the light and shadows.

The resulting Crop Rotations is a series of botanical c-prints sandwiched between sheets of UV-resistant Plexiglas. Kuzma used a flatbed scanner to copy the kernels, cobs, and silk of an ear of corn taken from a friend’s Iowa farm, and then digitally manipulated them to create specific patterns. The images were printed out and placed between plates of Plexiglas to create 20 full and two partial tiles. The installation process took a day and a half to complete. In the final work, the plant parts appear six to seven-hundred times their actual size, with colors inverted into shades of blue and green, arranged into kaleidoscopic, geometric patterns. The wall above the doorway has two rows of tiles, both to echo the shape of the wall and to form a tympanum in reference to the squared circle in Louis Sullivan’s stained glass design for the Merchants National Bank located in downtown Grinnell. The tiles to the left of the doorway feature lotus-like patterns, while on the right, Kuzma arranged wheel-shaped forms.

Though her work is inspired by elements of Islamic, Egyptian, Oriental, and French art, as well as by the architecture of Louis Sullivan, the idea for this frieze came to Kuzma from her work with Midwestern plants. She found that the well-being of the plant world was extremely important to the heavily agricultural Midwest. Corn in particular has myriad uses, the number of which has increased dramatically by the recent advent of genetic manipulation. Corn, a product that the Midwest has historically depended upon for financial and agricultural benefit, seems in many ways essential—even sacred—to Midwestern life. But through the unnatural manipulation of genetically modified food, Kuzma believes that corn now also has the potential to become monstrous. In the artist’s own words:

The frieze is a cycle of rotation based on the same content, forming a set of possibilities yielded from a common source … “Remember the Seed-Germ,” [Louis] Sullivan wrote, referring to the tremendous metaphorical potential of these small, dry things and our responsibility when coaxing this potential into being … The seed-germ’s potentials … are very much in question.

Sullivan took geometric forms and attempted to make them appear organic to drive his point home, whereas Kuzma turns his idea around and does just the opposite. She takes an actual organic seed, corn, and creates geometric patterns to demonstrate the modern treatments and implications of the “seed-germ.”

About the Artist: Born in Binghamton, N.Y., and currently a resident of Milwaukee, Sally Kuzma has been creating art from the plants of the Midwest since her move to the region several years ago. Kuzma has a background in drawing and painting, and also works with photography, graphic art, and jewelry design. She received a B.F.A. in 1985 from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an M.F.A. in 1994 from the State University of New York-Stony Brook. Kuzma was the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 1994 and an Iowa Arts Council Grant in 2002. She has shown in over a dozen exhibitions nationwide and has works in several permanent collections, as well as on two college campuses. In addition, Kuzma has had both her written and artistic work published and has spent time teaching at various universities.

Essay by Eszther Csicsai '07
Updated 2006