Crop Or Seed Art

Lillian Colton died last week. You probably don’t recognize her name, but if you are an admirer of the Minnesota State Fair, you would never forget her and the work she created. No obituary was published in the New York Times, but her passing was marked by the two large city papers in the Twin Cities.

Lillian produced crop art – specifically, portraits made out of seeds, painstakingly, one seed at a time. The first time I saw her work – in the Horticulture building, naturally – I was bemused. Well, not really bemused, but not appalled either.

I think I thought something like, “Who would spend his or her time doing this stuff?” In succeeding years, as the portraits multiplied, I began to appreciate the commitment which this woman brought to her work.

Don’t get me wrong, the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art never beat a path to Lillian’s door, but one sensed that didn’t matter to her. She was in the exhibit space one year, answering questions, and she looked like everybody’s "with it" grandmother.

One year, there was an enlarged exhibit, and somewhere in the middle of looking at portraits of Garrison Keillor and Richard Nixon, I finally figured it out:

Like any true artist, what drove Lillian was her passion for it, the kind of commitment that kept her glueing seeds of various hues one by one through the dark Minnesota winters.

You may not like the art, but you must admire the passion.

Passion and playfulness are two essential traits for navigating the lengthening shadow world of old age. Lose the first, and your grip begins to weaken; lose the latter, and there is one less reason for friends and acquaintances to treasure their time with you.

So when you visit your next county or state fair and meander past the jams, jellies, breads, photographs, paintings, woodwork, ironwork, knitting, and crocheting. Remember the passion which underlies the creation of all of them.

I’m sure that there will be a memorial exhibit to Lillian at the Minnesota State Fair – they call it our great state get-together, and I plan on attending, in hopes that just around the corner or down the road, there is someone like Lillian Colton, waiting for his or her chance to illuminate our world with crop art or something very much like it.

To enjoy some of Lillian’s work, click here.

August, 2007 Update From The Minnesota State Fair

K. and I went to the opening day of our great state get-together. Not the grandest of days, it was rainy but cool, and we managed to traipse around for just under seven hours when our legs turned into immovable stumps. One of the highlights was the seed art exhibit. In celebration of Lillian's life, there were photographs of her home in southern Minnesota, her jars of various seeds, and a very congenial picture of her. At the other end of the exhibition were several pieces of her crop art from her career.

And in between, oh my, does the legacy endure you may wonder ? Surely so, with some lovely work done by the young and the not so young. So the foremost practitioner of the art has left us, but her legacy is there for all to see.