Over the Fence Urban Farm

Cooperatively farming small patches of Earth in Columbus, OH

Tag Archives: Global Gallery Columbus


by 1 Comment

The Farm as Artistic Space

I have so many thoughts to try to organize on the subject of this post. More posts will be necessary. Consider this Part I.

Three years ago I wrote an article for the art education journal Artezein (see Art Education in my Backyard) about the farm as it relates to and benefits from my training and experience as an art educator. But that was just a piece of the puzzle; a snapshot of my thinking. A meditation on what I offer others through the work. Since then I have been given more time to the notion of the farm as my artistic practice.

This has been on my mind since I got started. As I attended meetings of urban farmers in Columbus, I felt a sense of imposter syndrome. What qualified me to be in a room with these people? What did I have to bring to the conversation? In those moments, I often recalled the work of Nikki S. Lee who has positioned herself as a member of various cultural groups in oder to learn more about them, to try own their clothes and see the world from their point of view, and to make amazing photographs along the way.

After five years, I’m more confident in what I’m doing, and in calling it something like long-term, socially-engaged, participatory, performative, eco art project exploring relational and green aesthetics, and small scale economic theory. My use of all this jargon is part of the performance, as I play the part of academic as well as artist and farmer.

Since this all got started I have hosted numerous tours on the farm including a few for elected officials (see On Site with Columbus City Council Member Elizabeth Brown and City Council Farm Tour), blogged extensively, and offered spoken words and images at Pecha Kucha (check out a recording embedded in this post if you haven’t seen it already!). In each, I flexed my creative muscles – in multimodal directions.

After reviewing an exhibition of mobile photography at the Columbus Museum of Art, I started thinking about all the images I posted on Instagram to share the moments of “fleeting beauty” I experience while in the field. Like the conceptual artists who inspired me to engage farming as a creative practice, those images serve as documentation of my work. They serve as a gateway for people not accustomed to thinking of soil and water as artistic media entrance into the farm as creative space, not merely an agricultural one.

And so, it is with great pleasure that I am celebrating an exhibition of my photos at Global Gallery in Clintonville this month. The show was sponsored by the Greater Columbus Arts Council and will be up through the end of the month. I’ll be there for a reception this Friday night from 6-8pm. Hope to see some folks come out to talk about “The Work.”

Screen Shot 2018-09-12 at 12.29.27 PM


by Leave a comment

July and August Review

This season has been rough. I was under a lot of stress in the spring in various other aspects of my life and like Tita’s emotion-infused cooking in Like Water for Chocolate, I believe it had an impact on the farm. The erratic weather (a week in the high 80s, rounds of 2-3 inches of rain over two days followed by 7 dry days…) and an influx of animal pests displaced by road and sewer constructions throughout our neighborhood didn’t help either. And so, it isn’t surprising that I haven’t posted much in this space. I didn’t feel like I had much to celebrate.

Thankfully my friends and loyal CSA supporters have assured me, repeatedly, that they’ll support our work when times are good and when they’re not so good. They understand that that’s what community supported agriculture means. When the harvest is good, it’s great, and when it’s ain’t, it ain’t.

I suppose you could say part of what members received in their share this season was emails from me outlining the challenges we faced, as we faced them. I like to think of this as the “get to know your farmer” bonus CSAs and farmers’ markets provide.

With all this going on,  I had no idea two months had gone by since I posted here! And, in retrospect, it wasn’t all bad. Here are some highlights.

The Clintonville Farmers’ Market Kids’ Garden Club continued their meetings, field trips (Franklinton Farms and Rock Dove Farm), and had two great sales at the farmers market. They raked in over $100 which we’ll split between their harvest party and a donation to a yet to be determined local nonprofit.

We grew popcorn for the first time this year – in the kids garden and on the farm. Visitors who stopped by for the Clintonville Midsummer Garden Tour were surprised to see it. Thanks to our early planting, it was way more than “knee high by the fourth of July!”

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 7.46.16 AM

Edible Columbus featured me in the Local Hero column. It was great to run into people throughout the summer who saw the article. Made me feel almost famous. And appreciated.

We have a bunch of events coming up in September including the Simply Living Sustainable Living and Garden Tour – an answer to the wish my friends and I had for such an event in the spring after visiting the mainstream H&G show at the fairgrounds (see Follow-up on The Columbus Dispatch Home and Garden Show).  We’ll also be celebrating the beauty of small scale agriculture at Global Gallery September 14th for a reception celebrating “In the Footsteps of a Farmer: Fleeting Beauty,” a photo exhibition sponsored by an Greater Columbus Arts Council Artists in the Community grant.

Thanks for sticking with us in the good times, and the not so good times.