South Coast artists, farmers connect art and agriculture in new exhibition

Handmade ceramic bowls sit on the gallery’s floor and hang from the ceiling. Stones inscribed with the word “freedom” — sometimes once, sometimes so many times it covers the entire surface — cascade around the room like rain, suspended by the same threads that hold the bowls. All the strings are draped over the ceiling beams, swaying in the natural breeze of open windows, connecting at a loom in the corner of the room. 

This is the scene that meets visitors on the second floor of Longbarn Gallery, a space on a farm in Westport.

Anis Beigzadeh, a UMass Dartmouth MFA ceramics student from Iran, is the artist. She drew inspiration from her time on Freedom Food Farm in Raynham, working alongside farmer Chuck Currie. 

This two-room exhibition is the work of Beigzadeh and another artist, Dena Haden, who spent the winter and spring participating in the Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership’s Artist/Farmer Residency, a new project that connects South Coast-based artists with regional farms.

Haden, a New Bedford-based installation and fiber artist, paired with family-operated Apapacho Bloom Farm in Seekonk.

Longbarn Gallery hosts open hours this Saturday, June 20, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Both artists will attend to discuss their work with visitors. The show will also be on view by appointment until the end of June.

Beigzadeh said agriculture, just like art, “has a story, a process; it has progress,” and that the partnership highlights the way people consume both art and agriculture as essential parts of their lives. 

“When I heard that the farm was named Freedom Food Farm, I felt a very immediate emotional connection with this project,” Beigzadeh said.

Much of Beigzadeh’s work has to do with freedom, resilience, belonging and displacement, she said. So it felt only fitting for her to write the word “freedom” in English and Farsi and have her friends and viewers add other translations on the stones she collected from the farm.

On one of Beigzadeh’s first visits to Freedom Food Farm, she toured the greenhouse and noticed that the watering system reminded her of something.

“The pattern was almost exactly like the pattern of thread I use in my work,” Beigzadeh said. That inspired her to make thread a central part of the artwork. 

Some of the stones are suspended inches above the bowls Beigzadeh created, and the rocks can be gently drawn around the inside of the bowl to create different sounds. Beigzadeh said this is meant to pay reverence to the experience of being on the farm and its natural soundscape. 

The day before the exhibition’s June 4 opening, Beigzadeh went back to Freedom Food Farm to gather fresh produce to include in her artwork. Kids in attendance picked up the produce, some even biting into the vegetables and fruits. 

“The farmers were working on a process we call food; I was working on a process we call art,” Beigzadeh said. “But in the end, it was very connected.”

Haden said her goal was to “be a vessel for the story” that emerged from her time working with Catarina Lorenzo, the owner and farmer of Apapacho Bloom Farm. Haden visited the farm five times during the residency, each for two to three hours, pulling inspiration from the way the seasons and Lorenzo interacted with the plants and the land. 

Get the Arts Illuminated newsletter

Arts Illuminated is a talk-show for New Bedford-area artists to share and sell their work and explain their art in front of a live audience. Sign up for upcoming show alerts and learn about opportunities to attend and feature your art!

Sign up

“You start speaking to the land in different ways, and it speaks to you,” said Haden, who once lived on a farm for 10 years. Now an artist living in New Bedford, Haden said she uses only sustainable materials that can decompose in her artwork. 

In the current exhibition, paper was the only material she used that was “not totally natural,” she said. 

Since Apapacho Bloom Farm primarily sells flowers, the result included a series of paintings Haden made from the dye of the flowers. The exhibition also includes dried bouquets in handwoven baskets and a large, fiber-based piece that stands in the center. 

Haden said she mixed various elements with pigment from the flowers to create the dye used in her paintings. She found that certain combinations lead to a dull color that resembled that of wilting flowers. She thought of removing the duller colorations from the painting, but decided to keep them.

“I wanted it to be appealing and beautiful but also reflect the full cycle of nature,” Haden said.

Jenny Peace, co-owner of Longbarn Gallery, said it made sense for Longbarn to pair with SEMAP, a nonprofit that works in connecting, educating and advocating for local farmers across Southeastern Massachusetts, on their agriCultural project. Longbarn Gallery is rooted in bringing light to the intersection between culture and farming, Peace said, and aims to create a more accessible place to view art. She said she hopes the exhibition will help establish Longbarn as a gathering space.

“It was about the relationships just as much as the project, and I think that’s really important these days,” Peace said of the opening reception. “It wasn’t just collectors and artists, it was community and makers.”

AgriCultural is a larger SEMAP series of events meant to highlight the connections among art, culture and agriculture. SEMAP secured grants from Massachusetts Cultural Council and Westport Cultural Council to fund the residency portion of the project. 

Lorenzo, of Apapacho Bloom Farm, said seeing the artwork felt like giving the flowers another life. She wove the baskets that contain the dried flowers in Haden’s installation and said she knew from the beginning of the project that they each had a lot to learn from one another. 

“We need space where we can enjoy art and also appreciate working with the land,” Lorenzo said. 

Anna Albrecht, a journalism student at Boston University, is a summer intern at The New Bedford Light. She can be reached at aalbrecht@newbedfordlight.org.