This compassion project was to show compassion to a groups that we felt passionate about and felt they needed compassion shown. My posters focus on food sustainability. In the spring semester of 2022, i took a science perspectives class and the topic was about food sustainability, I became very interested in the subject and learned a lot from the class. That class inspired me to make my posters on this topic.

These posters were made to show compassion towards food sustainability, farmers, and people who may live in food deserts. For my first poster, I wanted to encourage people to start a community garden in their neighborhood or community and also support organic farmers. I used cutouts from many magazines to put together a collage of people coming together to build their garden.

My second poster focuses on unsustainable fast food. I was specifically thinking of people who live in food deserts that only have access to fast food restaurants and convenience stores. There is not much of fresh produce at these places. I want to encourage fast food places to offer fresher and healthier options so specifically people who live in food deserts can still get fresh food that is convenient for them. 

My Interview

I interviewed a farmer who farms organically to understand sustainability and why it’s important, and how can others get started in their journey to sustainability.

Interviewee: Judy (a farmer at Country Gardens Family Farm)

• Why do you farm, more specifically, why do you farm organically? They farm because it helps heal the Earth and a lot of people also don’t know where their food comes from. The farmers farm organically because they don’t want chemicals in their food and they believe it’s not something other people should eat either.
• What inspired you to teach others how to preserve foods, cook, and farm? The art was lost and so many people would come to their farm and ask about how to cook or grow something. Especially during and after covid, more people were growing food at home.
• Do you consider where you live to be a food desert? No, there’s many local farms and supermarkets around.
  • Follow up question I asked: How do you feel about people getting produce from supermarkets? It’s a choice for the people to make. Farmers have to have higher prices to make a livable income and some people can’t afford to support farmers. Farming doesn’t make them much money but it’s still a fulfilling act for the farmers.
• What are the advantages of farming? You get to be outside with nature and experience the Earth in its most natural form. You get to know where your food comes from.
  • Why should someone start growing their own food? You get to know where it comes from and be more engaged with the process.
• What got Judy into taking a home economics class? 4H club and then she went on to get a home economics degree and now she gets to use her knowledge on her farm when growing and cooking.
• How can people get into farming? Growing in their own yard. You don’t need much land to get started. You can also have raised plant beds or pots.
• What can people do to help get others to eat sustainably? Word of mouth. Post on social media of what’s important to you. Share some of what you grow with others.
• What advice do you have for those getting into farming or planting their own food? Take the time to learn about farming, ask questions
• What is your definition of sustainability? Being able to reuse the land you grow on. Don’t just use it on time. You should be able to continuously grow plants.
• Do you feel closer to your community by selling your crops locally? Yes the farmers are very face to face with their customers and get to meet any types of people and about their families.

I’ve always tried to be perfect. I remember when I was in elementary school erasing my work over and over because it wasn’t perfect. I was also a slow worker and going to fast would cause me to mess up something in my work and have to redo it. When I worked on group projects, my group mates would tell me “it doesn’t have to be perfect.” I hated hearing that phrase because I felt rushed and disregarded for my efforts to put out the best work. I also felt that if my work wasn’t perfect, it would affect my grade. I always wanted to give out my best work.

In this project, I did an hour of drawing things. I don’t normally draw and was a little intimidated to draw, which was animals. I drew them with a pen to avoid worrying about mistakes and erasing anything. My drawings came out quite well. I enjoyed not worrying about mistakes or redoing any lines. This is a great exercise to do to just let go and just draw without having the pressure to be perfect with every line.

This nature project was inspired by the works of Andy Goldsworthy.  The art is created only with things from nature. This project gets you to have a better connection with nature. You get to be outside and use natural colors and shapes. Whatever nature gives you, you must create something with it. This was the most relaxing project in my opinion and it was interesting to not pick up a pen or pencil  and think of a design and draw lines to create

this project was simple and straightforward and there are so many routes you can take. I thoroughly enjoyed using he same items, but in different ways that were completely different from the last.

I always enjoy finding new ways to make art. This activity was so liberating for me and I enjoyed getting outside and scavenging for items and them figuring out how to use them in my art pieces.

The materials I used were leaves, acorns, two spherical baby pinecones that I found on my school campus.

This is the first piece I made. I worked on this with my brother and helped crush and crumble up leaves. He also helped place the acorns and some of the leaves.

This is the second piece I made. It’s a gradient of red leaves going black to red. The black leaf at the top of the trail gave me this idea to do a gradient because I loved the black color and the small amount of yellow on the leaf. I wanted to use the leaf somehow, so this is what I came up with.

This is the fourth piece. It’s a jumble of whole leaves becoming nothing but crumbs and flying away at the end of the curve.