Liz Brindley: Garlic
No Land | January 2018
“At the end of the day, I just want to be covered in ink and soil,” Liz Brindley says. This may not be too difficult a feat when you take into account how many hats she wears on a weekly basis: farmer, artist, writer, art educator, printmaker, community organizer.
No Land’s next exhibition is Garlic, an artist residency that incorporates all facets of Brindley’s creative practice. Garlic features Brindley’s drawings, prints, a wall-sized mural, and installations of garlic skins, soil, and a kitchen-like space. Through Garlic’s two-month run time, Brindley will host workshops and other events at No Land centered on both art making and food, hoping to provide spaces for honest dialogue about local agriculture, food justice and creativity.
“Garlic is so underappreciated,” Brindley says. “It’s in just about everything we eat, and yet it’s so precious.” As garlic is planted in autumn, it grows underground through the winter until harvest in early summer. Of all that is harvested, half of the crop gets replanted when fall comes again. To Brindley, this precious practice of cultivating garlic is the perfect metaphor for the naturally occurring cycles within people that we tend to ignore. “You know, humans are supposed to follow the cycles of the seasons, too,” Brindley points out. “The land slows down and rests in the winter, and maybe this is also a time for us to slow down and reflect.”
Video by Kate Martin
Press
“At [Brindley’s] exhibition, one room will have a kitchen installation, as well as food and harvest-inspired prints on display. In another room will be the large, painted mural with abstractions of garlic heads and scapes, or the tops of the plants. She said she was inspired by the beauty and ‘spring’-like quality of the dark green scapes. One of the exhibition rooms will be half-filled with a layer of soil. Visitors will be able to take their shoes off, walk around and feel connected to the earth, said Brindley.”
-Megan Bennett, Albuquerque Journal North
My contributions: Curatorial with Kyle Farrell and Alex Gill, press relations with Alex Gill
Artwork: Liz Brindley