Alchemy Artist Residency: It’s all about food and community!
Written by Barbara Brown
When artists and farmers gather with a focus on food, it’s always a creative and delicious adventure!
What a thrill it was for me to spend my third year with the Alchemy Artist Residency during the summer of 2023, photographing Lorraine Schmid and Lori Aselstine at Thyme Again Gardens in Ontario’s Prince Edward County.
It was a privilege to witness firsthand, the life’s work of these two remarkable women in action as an extension of my work on the Sowing the Future project last year with Diane Perazzo and Jess Weatherhead.
Prince Edward County is a well-established agrarian community in a beautiful rural setting, just south of Bellville Ontario. It boasts beautiful summer weather, long sand beaches and many farms and wineries that contribute to its unique charm.
We entered the County at the village of Carrying Place, the shortest crossing between two bodies of water as named by the original Peoples of the area. We were mindful of the presence of First Nations for millennia in this special place.
This year I had the opportunity to make an in-depth study of one farm and the two women farmers who run it. At the residency, we had a weekend to get settled and to get to know the other participants through a classic Alchemy activity of making pasta featuring farm fresh county eggs. This year’s learning was ravioli stuffed with homemade ricotta and served with brown butter and sage.
Monday morning began with an interview with Lorraine and Lori to get to know their work and to establish my approach to working with them. The next morning, I met Lori (below) and accompanied her as she moved their chicken tractor. I was raised in the city and live an urban life so it is really fascinating to be in the midst of the activities of a working farm. There is so much to see and learn!
As keenly interested as I am, I do wonder what I have to contribute but, I am an artist with an eye for detail, so everything was worthy of attention. My driving question is “how do people connect with the land” and I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to witness up close how Lori and Lorraine farm and are deeply respectful of the ways of the land and the particulars of place.
Most evenings, we gathered to cook together and debrief on the day’s activities. The conversation was wide ranging and always topical, touching on the new learning and the struggles of the day. Some days ended with a visit to the local beach to jump in the cool waves of Lake Ontario.
As the days flew by, each artist found a focus for their work. My partner Dan began collecting and painting with the local “mud” from the winery he was paired with. Adriana gathered plants to see what colours they would offer for dying fibres, Patti made a series of cyanotypes with the local plants and taught some of us how to make them. Annika experimented with ways of tinting her dumpling dough with colours she found in the processes of wine and cheese making. I photographed the seeding, transplanting, planting, weeding, harvesting and processing of produce at the farm.
It was an intense two weeks and a stark contrast to the mostly quiet days Dan and I spend at home. It took some adjustment but was a very welcome time under the wide-open County skies.
On the last day, I asked the two farmers to work with me to make long panoramic images that reflected the various activities they carry out in their gardens. The results ended up being what I choose to exhibit in their farm stand. I made an image entitled “Tending Kin” that illustrated seven versions of Lorraine working in her gardens. This image (see below) shows the repetitive gestures of caring for the plants. It’s a kind of compressed version of my time at the farm.
Tending Kin
photographic print on vinyl 20 x 65”
In Canada today, it is remarkable to encounter a woman who chooses to humbly tend the land in the way of farmers, working mostly by hand with simple tools.
Day after day she rises early and carries out a series of well-practiced farming activities. She takes care with her tools; she completes her tasks methodically, all with a gentle touch and a keen eye to the beauty and mystery of it all. After more than a couple of decades of working the land, now it is the land and the plants and the animals that tell her what is needed. She responds by noticing, pruning, fertilizing and mulching, all the while with the overall health of the farm and the capacity of her aging body in mind. Perhaps she is channeling her Germanic ancestors as she observes and evaluates the results. She is not afraid to re-evaluate her approach and change her ways.
This kind of tending to the plant and animal kin is what I noticed over the two weeks I spent observing the care and attention of Lorraine and Lori, the farmers at Thyme Again Gardens in PEC. Tending Kin notices the repetitive gestures of care, seeding, planting, weeding, watering and finally harvesting. Repeated over the growing season, year upon year as they tend their small plot of land to feed both their community and the earth.
Sowing the Future 