Dwindle (2017)
965 Gallery at Center for Visual Arts MSU — Denver, CO
Embossed Print Panels, Watercolor, India Ink
28' x 11'
Dwindle
Eileen Roscina Richardson
In the late 1880's, over 7,000 apple varieties flourished. Flavors, shapes, colors, and uses we may never again collectively experience. At present, approximately 10 apple varietals comprise nearly 90% of the United States' production -- a fact that greets us squarely in grocers' displays. This mixed media installation is a eulogy to apple varieties that are now extinct, on the verge of extinction, or exist only in Doomsday seed-storage banks. There are about 7,000 individual relief-print apples represented here, an appeal to the alarming volume and rate of their disappearance.
The dwindling diversity of our agricultural output is an omnipresent phenomenon. Created by the streamlined, mono-crop industrial approach to growing and supplying food that fits the desirable characteristics of wholesale buyers and sellers: uniform appearance and flavor, maximum shelf-life, ease of storage and transport, we're left with a truncated palette.
Do we miss what we never taste? Do the consequences of constricting the orchard--the apple tree and its blossoms and fruits to an ever-shrinking gradient mean more than a lack of selection as consumers? In Orwellian logic, would a language reduced slowly over generations to ten words limit our ability to conceive and communicate dynamic ideas?
By presenting a memorial to these apples, I aim to increase the awareness of the thinning of our agricultural diversity; not as a lament, but one focused, tangible prompt to take responsibility for our choices as consumers and growers. You can help create demand for heirloom varieties beyond what exist in local markets and supermarkets by buying directly from farmers, planting apple trees in your own backyard (many varieties grow extremely well in Colorado), saving seeds, and working directly with or contributing to organizations that work towards preserving food diversity.
