Section D · Page 18
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, August 16, 1999
Artwork best viewed with heavenly perspective
Stan Herd, crop artist, shows a diagram of the cornfield turtle maze as he talks to visitors at the rural Lawrence home of John and Karen Pendleton. The maze is now;open to the public, and visitors are encouraged to bring flashlights at night. Photo by Lisa John/KANSAN
By Mindie Miller
Kansan staff writer
In a cornfield east of Lawrence, the stalks are standing tall after the recent deluge of summer rain. Low murmuring voices lace their way through the leafy arms of the corn. Toward the center of the field, the voices grow louder.
A machete blade splits the air, severing a six-foot stalk, leaving five inches remaining above the muddy soil.
Whoosh!
"Could you hold the sketch up a little higher, John?" asked the man with the machete. A tan fedora and dark sunglasses shield his face from the glare of the sun.
John Pendleton raises the sketch a few inches. The drawing is a scaled-down version of the image that Stan Herd is creating in John and Karen Pendleton's cornfield.
Herd makes a few more swipes with his machete and then pitches it into the earth. Herd, a local environmental artist, is carving a turtle-shaped maze at the Pendleton's, owners of Pendleton's Country Market, 1446 E. 1850 Road. The completed turtle maze will measure about 560 feet by 400 feet — about 5 acres.
From the ground, it looks like Herd has cut down random sections of the field. But from a higher vantage point, the combination of standing corn and strategically-placed negative spaces takes the shape of a turtle. For nearly 20 years, Herd has been creating art that is best viewed from the sky.
In 1976, Herd rented an airplane and hired a pilot to fly him over Dodge City so he could view a mural he'd painted on a building.
Living art
"I was fascinated by flight the first time I flew. It just absolutely knocked me out as an artist — someone who is fascinated by visual images anyway. The mundane became the spectacular from up in the air, and it stuck in my mind that this was a beautiful canvas," Herd said.
Since that flight, Herd has created more than 20 large-scale works of art using agriculture and the earth as his canvas. He has completed most of his
His first earthwork was a portrait of the Kiowa War Chief Satanta. Herd's interest in Native Americans began when he was a young child growing up on his family's farm in Protection, a small town in southeast Kansas, near the Oklahoma border.
"I could walk out the front door of the farm house to the Bluff Creek bank and find arrow points," he said. "I realized there were a people on the land before my father and grandfather."
Herd's interest in indigenous peoples continued as he grew older. Born in 1950, Herd latched onto the tail end of the '60s radical movement as a teen — a movement characterized by protests against the destruction of the natural environment and the displacement of indigenous peoples.
"I was a rabid environmentalist before I even knew what it was. I just had a sense that we were living wrong." Herd said.
work on Kansas soil, although England, Australia, Texas, Oklahoma, New York and Nebraska have also been venues for his unique art.
So far, Herd has created four Native American portraits. He also has collaborated with faculty members at Haskell Indian Nations University, creating a medicine wheel design on the university's campus. The semi-permanent work, "The Wheel," is used by students for ceremonies and meditation. The site has become a major point of contention in the debate about the proposed South Lawrence Trafficway.
"The Wheel" is unusual because most of Herd's earthworks are no longer available for viewing. Since he creates most of his images in fertile fields, they are often plowed under at harvest time. Despite the time and effort he pours into his projects, Herd said he viewed the ephemeral nature of his art as a strength.
"I felt it was a statement of respect about the natural landscape," Herd said. "I don't think anything I've ever done or ever will do, will surpass the beauty of the land itself."
Art as a living
that he has been forced to set aside his idealism on more than one occasion. He completed the final version of "Absolut Landmark" in 1990. This earthwork, which appeared in an Absolut vodka ad, consisted of an Absolutvodka bottle against a star quilt pattern.
"The line I used to draw between what I would and wouldn't do has changed because I'm just trying to survive," Herd said.
Herd has done commissioned work for Beck's beer, Northwest Airlines and others. He also created the cover art for Garth Brooks' album "Fresh Horses."
Herd has also created massive field still life artwork using multiple crops and other natural materials, including his famous "Sunflower Still Life," which survived in a field outside of Lawrence for three years. The image was three sunflowers in a vase against a patchwork background. Herd used native Kansas sunflowers to color the still life sunflowers bright yellow.
Herd said that he is putting the finishing touches on his "Ancient Fish Maze" on a hilltop field on the outskirts of Lawrence. The design for the maze was inspired by the fossil of an 80-million-year-old fish, "Xiphactinus," which archaeologists discovered in Kansas in the 1930s. KU's Natural History Museum houses a specimen of the 30- to 40-foot fish.
Herd said that he tried to avoid involving himself in commercial projects but
Herd stays extremely busy, often working on several field projects simultaneously.
"I feel like I'm caught in the rapid part of a river, and I'd really like to get on the bank and try to relax." Herd said.
He said he was afraid he wouldn't be able to slow down for a while. In addition to working on the fish maze and the turtle maze, he is salvaging trees for a coming project and working on mural designs for a Topeka library.
He said that the turtle maze should be finished sometime this week. The Pendleton, who are hoping the maze will bring more patrons to their place of business, said they would charge admission to walk through the maze.
841-PLAY 1029 Massachusetts
Soon, the corn will be bristling with voices as people navigate through the twisting maze. But the voices will disappear when harvest time rolls around and the turtle is returned to the earth.
—Edited by Derek Prater
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