Winter 2006

Excerpt from article Greener Pastures, by Sam Lowry

Horse Hair and Onions


Sorcha Meek works in her Hood River studio. She made paintings of the
Frahm farm on canvas sewn with horsehair to onion sacks.

Sorcha Meek, painter-printmaker from Hood River, Oregon, also departed from the familiar to create paintings, sewn with horsehair to gessoed onion sacks, depicting Rod and Lana Frahm's thousand-acre onion and beet farm on the Snake River near Ontario, Oregon.

"When I got there and saw and experienced the place, I realized it was going to be about land and earth and people, " Meek said.

Next visit, Rod greeted her with a giant metal bouquet welded from harvester parts - his own work of art. "You make what you do interesting and fun, " he said.

The compelling result of Maryhill's leap into relationship-based art, "Sustaining Change on the American Farm," will open the museum's season in March 2006.