If you enjoy creating images on canvas with a variety of mediums, you might be interested in creating a piece for a local Crop Art Competition. Artists can use a variety of seeds and grains to create any image they want on a board or canvas.
"It's Agriculture Month, for October, so we're just having a few activities that we're supporting, so for the Weyburn region, we're holding a Crop Art Competition," said Ken Evans, Agriculture Program Specialist with the Weyburn Regional office of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture.
Each grain, said Evans, has its own unique colour and texture, and the subject matter of the piece is up to the artist.
"Take seeds, grown in Saskatchewan, and put them, say, onto a cardboard or piece of wood, no smaller than 8 by 10, no bigger than 24 by 36, and then you make a picture of something," said Evans.
He said from abstract to a portrait of a person, the subject matter is completely up to the artist.
"There's just really a wide variance of subject matter," he said. "We don't really put any criteria around what the subject matter is, but I've seen things from pictures of Elvis to some really nice landscape pictures created with these seeds."
With the freedom to use local seeds creatively, anyone who takes on the challenge has a wide range of options for material.
"If you find seeds that have got a lot of colour to them, and they are indigenous to Saskatchewan, some of the red lentils are quite colourful," he said. "Folks can go and create texture through the various colours of the seeds, or through the different sizes of the seeds."
Those who don't have access to their own grain can obtain some, free of charge, from the Canadian Grain Commission.
"That's why we've got Canadian Grain Commission involved," noted Evans. "They're constantly gathering samples of a wide variety of crops. So, they can phone over to the Canadian Grain Commission and get a sack full of whatever it might be that you want to work with for your medium."
Contact Judy Elias at the CGC (306) 848-3350 to make arrangements for pickup of seeds.
Seeds can include oats, wheat/durum, barley, flax, rye, corn, soybeans, navy, lima kidney, pinto and other 'field' beans, sunflowers, buchwheat, field peas, millet, safflower, common forage grasses (timothy, bluegrass, wild grasses, etc), alfalfa, mustard, canary seed, canola, green lentils, red lentils, and French green lentils. Weed seeds are not allowed.
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