The earth print series presented at Boston Sculptors Gallery Postcards from the Field: Contemporary Pastoralism exhibition was made in collaboration with the livestock and farmers of the small farms surrounding my studio in Western Massachusetts. I call the process a controlled happenstance. While collecting the pasture to create an earth paint, I watch the habits and movements of the farm animals; the oxen’s slow and phlegmatic swagger in contrast with the sheep’s frenetic and scittery, flock as one, movement as they are let out to pasture in the morning. This observation helps me imagine what might be captured on the print and how best to arrange the placement and situation of the canvas that will be inked and imprinted by the animals. At this moment, this series of prints of the pasture are an authentic landscape painting for me. I am brought to the action and movement happening in the fields around me, truer than any snapshot on my phone.
-Nancy Winship Milliken
Oxen Print Morning Routine, earth, canvas, sealant, 5x5’, 2015
To see more of this and other work please visit wwwcontemporarypastoralism.com a website dedicated to the Contemporary Pastoralism project in which Milliken has traded studio for farm to collaborate with the animals and people of small New England farms.
Sheep Print, Out To Pasture, earth, canvas, sealant, 27x56”, 2015
The Nancy Winship Milliken studio has also printed a fifty page book about the different farms and collaborative projects from 2008 through 2015. Get your copy here. http://nancymilliken.com/catalogs/postcards-from-the-fiel