Jack's Solar Garden creates Artist on the Farm residency

For several months, artist Rachael Scala visited Jack's Solar Garden weekly to gain inspiration for a series of large scale multimedia sculptural pieces of art. Her process was time and resource intensive.

Throughout the spring and summer, Scala, who lives in Nederland, worked to build a series of six pieces of art, the first show created through the farm's new artist-in-residence program.

Her path to this point involved her passion for permaculture, and part time work for a biodynamic gardening and landscaping crew. She first visited the farm as part of the crew helping to build pollinator habitat in May of this year, where she met Byron Kominek, owner of Jack's Solar Garden.

Kominek initially came up with the idea to have an artist embedded on the farm, and through mutual friends and conversation with Scala, found out that her artwork and philosophy matched his vision for an artist-in-residence program. He selected her to be Jack's Solar Garden's first official artist-in-residence in the spring.

Scala's artwork relies on a variety of media and techniques, including photography, drawing, painting, assemblage, and collage, and draws heavily on using found items to recycle or upcycle them into something beautiful.

For this series, Scala sourced items from the farm itself, including an old ladder, many rusty nails, twin doors, an old trunk, and memorabilia from the farm, including calendars from the 50's, teacher's guides from the 60's, and a number of coloring books.

"Jack's happens to be an historical treasure trove of the family farm history of agriscience and family and school," said Scala. In addition to the historical objects and recycled materials, she also incorporated natural elements into the artwork, such as lavender and grass trimmings.

"I have created many public and private works including restaurant and farm murals,

collaborative pieces, sculptures, and more," said Scala, however, "I was not quite sure how to wrap my head around this project in the beginning."

She decided to draw inspiration from permaculture practices: "Observe, then interact." So her initial time on the farm was spent using photography as an observational and record-keeping media. Later on, she incorporated photographic prints into the final work.

The six pieces are roughly split into two separate styles. For four of the pieces, she used an old ladder for her frame, which she split into pieces of approximately three feet by four feet. She then incorporated the photographs and found materials into the pieces, and they are hung on copper wire from an old refrigerator.

The remaining two pieces also incorporate found materials into a recycled frame, built from old french doors, which she disassembled and rebuilt, and incorporated the found materials, as well. The doors were then hung on large wooden frames, which she built with her boyfriend, that are about eight feet by 10 feet tall.

Of Scala's final artwork, Kominek said, "​It stunned me. It blew away my expectations."

Kominek envisioned the artist-in-residence program among the many community-building elements of his solar agrivoltaic farm. He said, "Businesses should support the arts as arts can help businesses be more creative. It's a give and take that often needs to start with businesses seeing the value in art."

It was important to both Kominek and Scala to emphasize the community element of Jack's Solar Garden.

"We asked her to cover what she saw that Jack's Solar Garden means to our community," said Kominek, "and we got to pick one of her pieces of work to keep at the end of the residency."

"Otherwise, she had free rein to decide what she wanted to do and how she created her work."

Scala described the work of the farm, which grows food and plants alongside farming solar energy as "cutting edge."

"I was excited to learn that such a cross functional farm was in the works in Boulder County," said Scala.

Scala's artwork is deeply aligned with the community and the environment. "Part of my objective in creating art is to foster the connection between people and the environment and each other," she said. "I believe that interconnectedness is our way through the climate crisis and the current socio-political environment."

Along those lines, Scala is donating 10% of the proceeds of sale of the artwork to two local non-profits: Audubon Society of the Rockies and Black Lives Matter - 5280.

Scala's connection to the farm as its first artist-in-residence "couldn't have been a better fit," she said, and she's "excited to pass the torch to next year's artist."

In the late winter, Jack's Solar Garden will be releasing a request for applications for the 2021 artist-in-residence, who will again work through the growing season to create a body of work based on the farm and the community.

Kominek said, "We'll be seeking an artist in Boulder County that can help us illustrate what we mean to our community, and likely give us a creation we can replicate that we can send home with tourists to our solar arrays."