Farm Mama: an exploration of the American cowgirl
Imagine waking up before the rooster crows. The sun is still sleeping. You rub your eyes, sit on the side of the bed for just a moment, exhausted from harvesting and canning the day before. Standing up, you wander down the hall to the bathroom, wash your face, braid your hair, brush your teeth, no time for make-up. After slipping on your trousers and a worn out flannel shirt, you step into the kitchen to start the day. Coffee first, for you and your farmer. Eggs, from your own chickens, and bacon, from the hog you slaughtered last Fall. Start the washing machine. You’ll hang the clothes on the line when you get back from feeding and watering the cows. Pull on your work boots. Stepping outside the screen door slams just as the sun starts to peek over the hill. The rooster crows. Good morning, Farm Mama.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I grew up in a small farming community in Arkansas with a population of around 1,000 people. They might have been counting all the dogs and livestock to get that number. I’m joking, of course. If you don’t get it, that’s okay. This is country humor. Almost everyone I went to school with lived on a farm. Most people grew massive gardens with a footprint as large as a house. I think I only ate strawberries from the grocery store a handful of times before I went off to college. My grandma always grew plenty to share. Blueberries, too. Oh, how I miss those blueberries.
I attended a high school that included grades 7 through 12, graduating with 60 people. During deer season, boys showed up to school in camo bibs ‘cause they’d been hunting since before dawn. In the spring and summer, they kept their fishing poles in the back of their pickup trucks so they could leave straight from school to go to the lake. This was ordinary life for us.
The captain of the cheerleading squad was a good friend of mine. We cheered together for 3 years. She was beautiful with long curly golden hair, eyes as big as saucers, and eyelashes for days. She drove an old red T-top Camaro, sported giant silver hoops, and always had her nails and homework done. By looking at her, you’d never know that she woke up at 5am at the age of sixteen to spray feces out of the concrete floored hog pens every single morning. That was her job on the farm, no matter if we walked off the bus from the away basketball game at midnight. This was expected of her. She wasn’t being “a good girl” or doing any favors. This was her payless, thankless job as a member of a farm family.
Growing up, the women around me knew how to do things like crochet, knit, tat, sew, make and mend clothes. They knew how to can vegetables, make jam, store potatoes and onions in dirt walled root cellars. The wealth of knowledge they carried around inside their minds was astounding. No one wrote down recipes, yet they made meals that would make you go back for seconds and thirds. Sunday supper was always the highlight of the week. Homemade chicken and dumplings, turnip or collard greens, corn on the cob, fried okra, and fresh tomatoes from the garden, with banana pudding for dessert. My mouth is watering thinking about it.
These women also knew how to do gastly, gory things like kill and pluck a chicken, castrate a bull, deliver baby calves, and chase rat snakes out of the chicken coop. Danger didn’t phase them. They always seemed brave and tough, able to face any challenge head on. Despite this ruthless grit, they also were exceptionally nurturing, making time to sing hymns and nursery rhymes to babies, chase toddlers in the front yard, churn homemade ice cream on the porch, and plant tulip bulbs in spring.
My mama is the age now where she’s achieved a notoriety for her rainbow pasta salad and banana pudding. No one tells her what to bring to family gatherings or church potlucks anymore, and no one else dares to attempt to challenge her recipes for either. It’s common knowledge that Betty is in charge of these two dishes, and that’s just the way it is. Her mama was known for her fried potatoes, homemade pickled okra, and divinity candy at Christmastime. My daddy’s momma was known for her chocolate pie with homemade crust and banana bread. And this is the way things are with country women.
This is Farm Mama.
ABOUT THE WORK:
Farm Mama is a series celebrating the spirit of the American cowgirl, the farmer’s wife, and the small town rodeo queen. Featuring geometric quilt patterned backgrounds, hand-stitched embroidery, and antique sequins, this work explores the juxtaposition of grit and grace, beauty and filth, hard labor and rich blessings. The women featured in the work range from real-life rural rodeo queens to the Hollywood glamorization of cowgirls as sexy siren characters.
A combination of bold lips, power poses, glares, and snarky smiles communicate the sassy attitude needed to keep up with the cowboys in town. Colors in this series mimic blackberry jam, turnip greens, homemade strawberry ice cream, purple hull peas, sweet tea; mammoth sunflowers, fields and fields of golden hay, soft green grass, wild African violets, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace; the innocence of bubble gum and the seriousness of bloodshed.
Most of the painting was done and embroidery work created with the canvas in the artist’s lap, a coincidence, but relevant nonetheless, since much of quilting and sewing, mending and making happens in the lap of the Farm Mama.
Videography by Sasquatch Mansfield.
