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Seedy dealings at CERA

by Katie McMullen

Like many collectors, Lee Running, Art, loves to show off her treasures. Rather than display her growing collection of seeds in the traditional fashion, Running creates works of art.

Placing the seeds in a slide projector, Running traces the projected images onto transparent acetate with black ink and then exposes the tracing to light-sensitive emulsion, creating a stencil. She uses paint made from burned prairie grasses, charcoal and wallpaper glue.

For today's "Shadows, Echoes, and Ghosts," an interdisciplinary panel addressing the social, spiritual, historical and artistic facets of seeds, Running has transformed the Conrad Environmental Reasearch Area (CERA) building into a shrine to the seed. Her art envelops the buildings, walls, floors, windows and furniture. As part of the panel, she will discuss her artwork, and others will represent the fields of sociology, biology, anthropology and religion.

"The idea of being able to make a shadow from the burn-you know, make that really physical connection materially between what's going up on the walls and the regenerative power of fire in that landscape-was pretty exciting to me," said Running.

Running has been collecting seeds and creating seed-based art since last semester. The organic, connective nature of Running's work caught the attention of Luis Fernandez, Sociology. The two began discussing the various strata of seeds in society, eventually forming the panel.

"We realized there was this common thread in both our research and our work that we hadn't talked about before, but that these seeds were bringing us together about this," said Running. "The idea of the panel emerged organically from us really physically looking at seeds in this space."

Fernandez identifies the seed as a "location of struggle." He has been interested in genetically modified seeds and social movements related to the issue.

"I've been reading a lot about indigenous movements that have been gathering around the seed as a symbol of what is called the global commons: those things that we as humans own collectively because we produce collectively over thousands and thousands of years," said Fernandez.

To encompass all aspects of seed discourse, Fernandez and Running collaborated with a Pagan priestess, Reverend Circe Moss.

"We've asked her to come because she has a connection as a pagan, a particularly spiritual connection to the seed in certain ways, so that the seed becomes a metaphor for all sorts of spirituality," said Fernandez.

Also on the panel is Jonathon Andelson, Anthropology. Andelson plans to share the story of the Hidatsa bean to demonstrate the historical connotations of the seed.

"Historical awareness," said Andelson. "That's what I hope they get out it. A seed is a historical artifact. It carries a story of a variable number of years of the history of that plant. That's one of the best stories there is."

The panel participants expect an non-traditional mood and understanding.

"It's kind of an experimental thing," said Fernandez. "We're trying not to just produce another panel. We're trying to produce something that's being experienced differently. It is bound to look a little strange because you're crossing certain, even epistemological understandings of how to know anything."

As for Running, the panel provides the perfect venue for sharing her treasures.

"As far as what I really hope people will see it is the beauty of genetic diversity and the beauty of so many of these seed shapes and how different, how radically different they all are from each other," she said.

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