‘oglala’ – Matthew Farley

Inspired by the Stored Potential project description reference to “reading the landscape,” public artist Matthew Farley immediately envisioned center-pivot irrigation circles.  An aerial reminder of the grid system imposed over much of the United States by Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 National Land Survey, the pattern still provides the basic geometric order of the once unruly Great Plains.  In June 1976, Scientific American magazine called center pivot irrigation “perhaps the most significant mechanical innovation in agriculture since the replacement of draft animals by the tractor.”  William E. Splinter, the author, then a professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, though possibly biased, was not far off the mark.  A short 25 years later, US astronauts could identify the Northeast Nebraska region from 270 miles in space by the patterns of lush, green crop circles produced by center pivots.  When these circles began to fill the infrastructural grid of settlement, simple topographic potential became technological potential.

Using satellite imagery, Matthew has stitched together a “quilt” of parcels from the Nebraska landscape near the town of Ogallala so that the resulting arrangement of darkened crop circles emerge as Braille symbols.  Coded within the crop circles is a reference to the Ogallala (High Plains) Aquifer, the precious resource stored below—perhaps the ultimate “stored potential.”  The image’s pattern alludes to the originating word, “oglala” (lower case is used in the translation for visual purposes), meaning “to scatter one’s own.”  The watery color palette offers a visual clue to this coded text—and certainly, the “circles of blue” are appropriate as well.  The banner utilizes high-resolution satellite imagery courtesy of the United States Geological Survey that reveal details such as tractor tire marks, which form another layer of patterning reminiscent of quilting and an indication of deeper settlement: cultivation.  Seemingly plucked straight from a satellite, this composed landscape, although fictitious, also affords the inclusion of I-80 and the Lower Platte River across the top of thebanner and further integrates topography and technology.

Matthew Farley’s career as an artist began when he started signing his name next to the pictures he drew on the wall of his childhood home in Wichita, KS.  Growing up, he was exposed to the magnificent collection of outdoor sculpture at Wichita State University, where his mother taught.  Eventually, Matthew found his way to Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, where, again surrounded by a wealth of art, he received his Associates of Arts.  Matthew went on to earn his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in sculpture from The University of Kansas in 2009 and is currently pursuing his interest in public art.  Since graduating, Matthew was awarded the 2010 Connor Meigs Artistic Merit Award, which culminates this October with the opening of his first solo show at the ArtLoft located in the historic Florence Mill in Omaha.  The artwork for this show, along with several of his public works, seeks to draw attention to the ways in which we view and use water in our everyday lives and, in turn, world water issues.  One such work, Frozen Assets, was recently selected for Americans for the Arts 2010 Public Art Year in Review, which recognizes 40 of the year’s best public art works in the United States and Canada.