Growing up, I would tell friends I was visiting family in Iowa and they automatically thought it was the state of potato farming. Quickly I would straighten them out and say, “Iowa, not Idaho.” The rich black Iowan soil is a prime place for sweet corn and soybeans—not tubers. Art also usually isn’t found on that list of notable features.
This past weekend I took a trip to my grandparents’ house in the middle of the corn country. I saw more farms than some people may see in a lifetime. Something I always noticed, but not always appreciated, are Iowa’s barn quilt campaigns. On more than fifty barns in my grandparents’ county, Grundy, huge painted quilt squares gaze over rolling fields. Wooden skeletons of old barns are turned into frames for the folk art. These buildings are given a makeover in a region where new barns are usually constructed with lackluster metal after wooden ones deteriorate and collapse with old age.
Local shops display pamphlets for the quilt motifs and show the route driver’s can take to view all of the precious patterns with traditional names like “Rail fence” and “Windblown.” Communities take pride in the project. My grandparents have even made a mini-square to place on their old gray shed. I caught myself wondering if Missouri has a similar rural arts project.
Thanks to Google, the show-me-state didn’t let me down. The Boonslick Area Tourism Council is promoting a similar campaign near Columbia in the counties of Saline, Cooper and Howard. Last month, they raised their fourth quilt square and are determined to have 20 up by 2011. A route will form where the majestic wooden tapestries can be viewed from rural roads. The council is calling it a way to promote “agri-tourism.” If they can bring people out of the city to appreciate the old art form and scenery, then locally owned businesses could benefit from us city slickers.
October 4 is also going to be an opportunity for St. Louisans to support the agricultural scene. Farm Aid has chosen St. Louis County as a concert venue for their fight for family owned farms. Big names like Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Dave Mathews will perform at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater to raise money to “keep America growing.” Small farms have to compete to save their land and our right to clean food. John Mellencamp says, “We all see what’s happening with agriculture, what’s happening to our small towns. They are going out of business. That is a direct result of the farm problem. We’re still doing Farm Aid because it is contributing. It’s doing a job.”
There’s nothing like supporting the arts and America’s heartland at the same time. It is just as important to shop local in other areas of Missouri as it is in St. Louis. If you like folk art, folk music or just doing a good deed, opportunities are growing out in the country and moving closer to the city. --Alice Telios, Summer Intern
