Elliot Kayser
Artist Statement
Growing up my mom always shopped at the local food coop, feeding me healthy bland food. We lived in an apartment in the city, with no yard to speak of. When I went off to college I tried becoming a vegetarian; eating the cafeteria mystery chicken sandwiches kind of freaked me out, so I went cold turkey (pun intended) and started just consuming the non-meat cafeteria dining hall options, which as you can imagine doesn’t inspire dietary activism. I started breaking out in rashes of hives as a result, after many unhelpful doctor visits I went to a naturopath who helped me discover that I was allergic to msg, a natural byproduct of soy. I had been consuming a lot more tofu as a result of my new cafeteria diet plan. Identifying the culprit was a relief, but the bigger take away was realizing that I had no idea what went into the food I was eating. I grew up having exposure to buying organic produce and hormone free meat, but I had never made those decisions for myself. I began to read books, and watch documentaries about food; and in my senior year I travelled around upstate New York, interviewing farmers.
Forming a direct connection with food grew stronger after college when I went to go live on a farm in Cottage Grove with my best friend for a summer. While there I got way more involved in cooking and gardening; I even helped build an aquaponic greenhouse, complete with tilapia tanks and a flush bed irrigation system. The farm had a youth outreach program to work with vocational high school students and WWOOFers (International organic farm work exchange program). It was a whole community that came together to be self-sustaining; subscribing to the 100 mile diet, where all food consumed had to be produced within 100 miles of the farm, 60% of which they grew themselves. The amenities of the farm were impressive, but it was the community that really solidified my commitment to being involved in agriculture. Up until that point I had never found a group of people that lived by such dedicated commitment to community and equilibrium. To be a steward of the land is to ebb and flow with the seasons. It meant that in winter the farm subsisted on a limited diet of stored root vegetables, bread and meat, but come summer the bounty of fresh produce was vast. This acknowledgement of limitations, of delayed gratification was never something I had thought about shopping in a grocery store where strawberries are available year round. Being in the fields helped me to not only grasp mentally but physically and spiritually why strawberries taste better when in season. In the words of Wendell Berry,
“Production is the male principle in isolation from the female principle. Thus isolated, the male principle wants to exert itself absolutely; it wants to “do everything at once” – which is, of course, what doomsday will do. But reproduction, which is the male and female principles in union, is nurturing, patient, resigned to the pace of seasons and lives, respectful of the nature of things.”
(Berry, The Unsettling of America, pg. 217)
I am naturally a kinesthetic learner, so for me going to work on a farm to understand what goes into producing the food I eat feels natural. I am a sculptor, I understand the world around me through my hands, through action. When I am in the studio creating, I can’t talk on the phone or brainstorm ideas for writing a paper while I work, my concentration is devoted solely to letting my hands think through the techniques of pinching and modelling clay into shape. The relationship between me and the material is direct, there is no implement separating me from the material, it is the imprint of my hands in the terra cotta that help me to understand its strengths and limitations. The battling of wills between nature and humans is a dance, there is a balance that needs to be maintained for cyclical reproduction to be possible. As soon as we try to exert our dominance over nature we create a linear model of production, one that ultimately leads to exhaustion. In the case of modelling clay, as soon as you disregard the properties of the material you are quickly reminded that it contains memory of your actions. If you mishandle the clay or rush it through the drying process it will break and you have to start over from the beginning.
There is poetry in the actions of being a successful farmer, parent or ceramic sculptor; some say the work is hard, and therefore implying it is bad, others have called the work masochistic implying that punishment is enjoyable. For me the work is demanding AND rewarding, it keeps me humble and patient, gives me purpose, and rewards me greatly for my perseverance. I work as a sculptor as a way of digesting my experiences, it helps me to clarify for myself what I value and what experiences and knowledge are worth sharing. Although I am an independent artist, none of it happens in isolation; it is my sense of community that gives my life purpose, art is just a way for me to contribute to the conversation. I hold myself to high standards, doing what I can to work hard, listen, and be a part of something greater than myself. I am full of life, I just cannot imagine spending my life being complacent, idly eating cafeteria mystery chicken loaf sandwiches just for the sake of convenience; so I am not choosing to live that way. Today I am not a vegetarian, instead I have chosen to participate in producing my food by getting connected with local farmers in the area. Since the first farm I worked on I have become increasingly involved in animal husbandry, taking care of livestock on farms. Nurturing animals requires personal investment, and with that a greater sensitivity to health and the positive impacts of symbiosis.
The cow has been a particularly important animal for me; perhaps it is my astrological relationship of being a Taurus born in the Year of the Bull, but more likely it is from observing how integral this gentle creature is to the American psyche. More than just helping to plow fields or provide sustenance on the farm, cows are foundational to American identity. Cows have been a hallmark symbol for prosperity, independence, and dominance or domestication of the untamed wild landscape. They are at once both commodity and idol, to be worshipped, not religiously but in capitalism as part of the American dream. There is so much nuance to how our lives are intertwined, that only in the past two generations has that relationship been severed by systematic distancing. My own path of learning about farming has led me to understand the value of connection to agriculture. As a result I have come to realize the vulnerability we subscribe ourselves to by allowing ourselves to be removed from that relationship. For me to grow up in a city without any understanding of how food is made only occasionally resulted in disappointment of off-taste produce, but now I realize more was being sacrificed than just taste or price. Placing blind trust in the food distribution and industrialized agriculture movement puts us on a linear logic of production, one that has an end. It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t produce food for the masses as efficiently as possible, but rather not at the expense of our own removal from that relationship. When I ask to visit large farm operations they turn me away citing high potential risk for the spread of disease or infection. A new system has been created where we have been told to fear a direct connection with our resources; they are only to be treated as commodity for exploitation. There has never been a point in human history until now when we were not directly involved in stewardship of land, and that to me feels unnatural. The conversation from this point can spur off in a multitude of directions from biopolitics, to world hunger, to environmental concerns, to the benefits of industrialized agriculture in terms of economics and job creation in other sectors, but for the most part that conversation leaves my personal experiences backseat to a game of intellectual posturing. I try to speak from experience, encapsulating questions about identity and relationships to what it means for me to be an American; that is the only position from which a conversation can commence, not from atop a soapbox, proselytizing to the masses, but from a place of listening and observing what is important in this rapidly changing and expanding time.
Growing up my mom always shopped at the local food coop, feeding me healthy bland food. We lived in an apartment in the city, with no yard to speak of. When I went off to college I tried becoming a vegetarian; eating the cafeteria mystery chicken sandwiches kind of freaked me out, so I went cold turkey (pun intended) and started just consuming the non-meat cafeteria dining hall options, which as you can imagine doesn’t inspire dietary activism. I started breaking out in rashes of hives as a result, after many unhelpful doctor visits I went to a naturopath who helped me discover that I was allergic to msg, a natural byproduct of soy. I had been consuming a lot more tofu as a result of my new cafeteria diet plan. Identifying the culprit was a relief, but the bigger take away was realizing that I had no idea what went into the food I was eating. I grew up having exposure to buying organic produce and hormone free meat, but I had never made those decisions for myself. I began to read books, and watch documentaries about food; and in my senior year I travelled around upstate New York, interviewing farmers.
Forming a direct connection with food grew stronger after college when I went to go live on a farm in Cottage Grove with my best friend for a summer. While there I got way more involved in cooking and gardening; I even helped build an aquaponic greenhouse, complete with tilapia tanks and a flush bed irrigation system. The farm had a youth outreach program to work with vocational high school students and WWOOFers (International organic farm work exchange program). It was a whole community that came together to be self-sustaining; subscribing to the 100 mile diet, where all food consumed had to be produced within 100 miles of the farm, 60% of which they grew themselves. The amenities of the farm were impressive, but it was the community that really solidified my commitment to being involved in agriculture. Up until that point I had never found a group of people that lived by such dedicated commitment to community and equilibrium. To be a steward of the land is to ebb and flow with the seasons. It meant that in winter the farm subsisted on a limited diet of stored root vegetables, bread and meat, but come summer the bounty of fresh produce was vast. This acknowledgement of limitations, of delayed gratification was never something I had thought about shopping in a grocery store where strawberries are available year round. Being in the fields helped me to not only grasp mentally but physically and spiritually why strawberries taste better when in season. In the words of Wendell Berry,
“Production is the male principle in isolation from the female principle. Thus isolated, the male principle wants to exert itself absolutely; it wants to “do everything at once” – which is, of course, what doomsday will do. But reproduction, which is the male and female principles in union, is nurturing, patient, resigned to the pace of seasons and lives, respectful of the nature of things.”
(Berry, The Unsettling of America, pg. 217)
I am naturally a kinesthetic learner, so for me going to work on a farm to understand what goes into producing the food I eat feels natural. I am a sculptor, I understand the world around me through my hands, through action. When I am in the studio creating, I can’t talk on the phone or brainstorm ideas for writing a paper while I work, my concentration is devoted solely to letting my hands think through the techniques of pinching and modelling clay into shape. The relationship between me and the material is direct, there is no implement separating me from the material, it is the imprint of my hands in the terra cotta that help me to understand its strengths and limitations. The battling of wills between nature and humans is a dance, there is a balance that needs to be maintained for cyclical reproduction to be possible. As soon as we try to exert our dominance over nature we create a linear model of production, one that ultimately leads to exhaustion. In the case of modelling clay, as soon as you disregard the properties of the material you are quickly reminded that it contains memory of your actions. If you mishandle the clay or rush it through the drying process it will break and you have to start over from the beginning.
There is poetry in the actions of being a successful farmer, parent or ceramic sculptor; some say the work is hard, and therefore implying it is bad, others have called the work masochistic implying that punishment is enjoyable. For me the work is demanding AND rewarding, it keeps me humble and patient, gives me purpose, and rewards me greatly for my perseverance. I work as a sculptor as a way of digesting my experiences, it helps me to clarify for myself what I value and what experiences and knowledge are worth sharing. Although I am an independent artist, none of it happens in isolation; it is my sense of community that gives my life purpose, art is just a way for me to contribute to the conversation. I hold myself to high standards, doing what I can to work hard, listen, and be a part of something greater than myself. I am full of life, I just cannot imagine spending my life being complacent, idly eating cafeteria mystery chicken loaf sandwiches just for the sake of convenience; so I am not choosing to live that way. Today I am not a vegetarian, instead I have chosen to participate in producing my food by getting connected with local farmers in the area. Since the first farm I worked on I have become increasingly involved in animal husbandry, taking care of livestock on farms. Nurturing animals requires personal investment, and with that a greater sensitivity to health and the positive impacts of symbiosis.
The cow has been a particularly important animal for me; perhaps it is my astrological relationship of being a Taurus born in the Year of the Bull, but more likely it is from observing how integral this gentle creature is to the American psyche. More than just helping to plow fields or provide sustenance on the farm, cows are foundational to American identity. Cows have been a hallmark symbol for prosperity, independence, and dominance or domestication of the untamed wild landscape. They are at once both commodity and idol, to be worshipped, not religiously but in capitalism as part of the American dream. There is so much nuance to how our lives are intertwined, that only in the past two generations has that relationship been severed by systematic distancing. My own path of learning about farming has led me to understand the value of connection to agriculture. As a result I have come to realize the vulnerability we subscribe ourselves to by allowing ourselves to be removed from that relationship. For me to grow up in a city without any understanding of how food is made only occasionally resulted in disappointment of off-taste produce, but now I realize more was being sacrificed than just taste or price. Placing blind trust in the food distribution and industrialized agriculture movement puts us on a linear logic of production, one that has an end. It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t produce food for the masses as efficiently as possible, but rather not at the expense of our own removal from that relationship. When I ask to visit large farm operations they turn me away citing high potential risk for the spread of disease or infection. A new system has been created where we have been told to fear a direct connection with our resources; they are only to be treated as commodity for exploitation. There has never been a point in human history until now when we were not directly involved in stewardship of land, and that to me feels unnatural. The conversation from this point can spur off in a multitude of directions from biopolitics, to world hunger, to environmental concerns, to the benefits of industrialized agriculture in terms of economics and job creation in other sectors, but for the most part that conversation leaves my personal experiences backseat to a game of intellectual posturing. I try to speak from experience, encapsulating questions about identity and relationships to what it means for me to be an American; that is the only position from which a conversation can commence, not from atop a soapbox, proselytizing to the masses, but from a place of listening and observing what is important in this rapidly changing and expanding time.