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Photographs by Whitney Curtis
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Julie and Robert Longyear, Entrepreneur and Artist
In high school, Julie Wicks learned that each step up the food chain sucks 90 percent of the energy generated in the previous step. She stopped eating meat. In college, migraines lost her a job, so she started a sewing business, then added soy candles and organic body-care products. She also fell in love with metalsmith Robert Longyear—a guy so cool, he didn’t mind her spending their wedding-gift money on essential oils. Now they urge relatives to buy their daughter art supplies instead of stuff, and they’ve left their “’50s-ish cardboard-box” rental to restore a three-story brick house in Hyde Park. Julie’s finally come up with a natural deodorant (“Honestly, some of them make you smell worse!”), and Robert scavenges Hyde Park (“a place full of character, magnetism, history, cacophony, and excess stuff”) for inspiration; more than simply recycling materials, he engages and transforms them. iriestar.com, craftalliance.org
Tim Montgomery, Founder of TMA Architects
“There are two sides to me: nerdy, analytical number-cruncher and creative architect,” says Tim Montgomery, a mechanical engineer with a master’s in architecture and a fascination with sustainability. Thirty years ago, he couldn’t find enough solar-design work in Missouri, so he moved to Colorado and lived in a Mesa Verde pueblo that was, essentially, a 900-year-old Anasazi solar village. “Our energy is too plentiful and too cheap,” he observes, “and we have a very short attention span.”
Montgomery’s first LEED project won Platinum certification; since then, he’s worked coast to coast and won a load of awards, even designing entire eco-communities that are mixed-use and pedestrian friendly, with coffeehouses and community centers, trails and playgrounds, hydroponic and rain gardens, restored prairie and woodland areas, sun tunnels and wind energy. “You follow the natural drainage patterns and the contours of the land rather than slicing into hills,” he explains. “It’s called low-impact design.” tmaarchitects.org
Molly Rockamann and Colleen Wilson, Founders of EarthDance Farms
Molly Rockamann (left in the accompanying photo) went once, in high school, to visit the Mueller organic farm in Ferguson. That’s all it took. She majored in environmental studies and apprenticed in organic farming. Passionate about art, music, dance, and the need to end hunger, she realized it all connected—and the nexus just might be the 1883 Mueller farm, now in need of tenant farming. Colleen Wilson, who was volunteering there, agreed it would be a disaster if developers sank their earthmovers into this rich soil. Together, they founded EarthDance, which teaches organic farming and will soon sponsor artists in residence. A sense of community is emerging, as strangers work side by side to cultivate the land, the arts, and their own awareness. “Nature,” observes Rockamann, “is the most creative process there is.” earthdancefarms.org
