Last year I made a piece for the 2007 Faculty Exhibition, titled “The Industrial Complex.” Since then I have continued to make a variety of work including a recent piece for the 2008 Faculty Exhibition titled Alternative Industrial Complex #003.

This piece is a continuation of concepts that are consistent & fluid in my work. Visually inspired by grain silos and exhaust vent systems, conceptually inspired by politics, the History channel, NPR and a series of books - this piece speaks about the growing concern and need for alternative sources of energy. Corn and ethanol have been debated for some time now, the benefits, economic viability, environmental consequences, etc, makes this “complex” crop a real sore subject. Books have been written about it, politicians lobby for it and against it, farmers praise and curse it. It has been engineered to do so much, we don’t realize just how important a piece of corn truly is. That said, this piece is not pro corn for use as ethanol, it’s about fuel, consumption, addiction...hopefully it is visually interesting as well.

The bags of feed corn on the floor have a wonderfully designed logo and package. “Producer’s Pride,” it says, “Quality, Value, Nutrition.” I could not have designed it any better myself. This coupled with a post war, idealized and glorified image of a farm landscape and a series of tags with barcodes and batch numbers made this a pivotal part of the piece. I found it at a local feed store, originally I was looking to fill the silo with corn, but when I saw these bags I had to have them, I think the piece is much stronger with them included.

Pure Oil is printed on the tumbler, filled with alcohol, by the way. An entire silo filled with corn, bags waiting to refill it, the cup only half full, illustrating just how inefficient the corn to ethanol fuel process really is. Do the research, you’ll see. Read a great book by Michael Pollen titled “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” It’s about the Industrial Revolution and the roll it has played in farming, food production and how we eat. I use the Pure Oil logo often in my work, I like the design, and play on the word as well.

Lastly, the frame (made of welded and fabricated steel) and the concrete column are rough, weathered, rusted, so is the cup - a relic, an antique. A contemporary idea already past. Maybe next year I’ll make something more upbeat, when gas is under 4 bucks a gallon.

The VSU Art Faculty exhibition: September 22 - October 10, 2008.

>> e-mail your comments: mschmidt@valdosta.edu