Crop artist Stan Herd transforms Centre County farmland into Biden campaign message
A globetrotting crop artist and his 12-person team recently left their ephemeral 1-acre mark on a Ferguson Township farm with an ingratiating homage to presidential candidate Joe Biden.
A group led by Stan Herd asked Kevin and Georgia Abbey if they could use the Abbeys’ land for the better part of October to complete their latest project. It didn’t take long for the Abbeys to say yes.
“We live in the midst of hardworking farmers, business owners, health care workers, musicians, food service workers, accountants and truck drivers. We felt like this was an honor for all of these folks here in the village of Gatesburg and across Centre County, the state and our nation,” Georgia Abbey said. “It honors all those people for what we believe makes America great — we’re all full of grit, hard work and integrity. It’s also a vision of the many different ways and aspects to knit our neighborhood and our country together, rather than render it apart.”
The meeting didn’t happen by coincidence. Herd was commissioned by the former vice president’s campaign to create three pieces in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Added bonuses included Herd’s relative familiarity with Happy Valley — he delivered a TED Talk in February at Penn State — and access to a nursery that sits adjacent to the Abbeys’ farm.
“I didn’t really know what it was all about until they said to me, ‘You need to Google Stan Herd,’ ” Abbey said. “So that’s what I did and I thought, ‘Ah, OK, now I get this.’ ”
The Kansas native has created vast portraits in the earth for about five decades. He’s completed projects on five of Earth’s seven continents, with the exceptions being Africa and Antarctica.
The weekslong process featured a variety of otherwise ordinary yard tasks — mulching, planting, mowing and plowing — and some meticulous planning. One inch on his blueprints represents 20 feet in the field.
What emerged Wednesday on the Abbeys’ 15-acre farm was a poster-style image of two construction workers, a farmer in the foreground of a rising sun, a bridge and an industrial skyline.
The depiction sits above one of Biden’s key campaign phrases — “Build Back Better” — the word “Biden” and the website iwillvote.com.
“We’re about community and we’re about sharing things. We’re doing positive works here and not negative works,” Herd said. “Everybody is so incredibly negative right now, but our work and these efforts were in a positive note. It’s saying we want to look to a bright future and we want that future to embrace the environment, old people, compassion, respect and all of the things that you learn when you’re in kindergarten.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 7:00 AM.