Giant Farmer of Plain

The Giant Farmer of Plain is a public art project, initiated by the WormFarm Institute, as an artist-in-residence component of their 2022 Farm Art DTour, a 50-mile-loop of art-on-the-landscape with each of the 12 installations and/or performances investigating our relationship with the land and those who live upon it. In this project, Christopher Lutter-Gardella was imbedded at Kraemer Bros Construction Company, in the small village of Plain, Wisconsin, working with company carpenters and metal fabricators to create this spectacle-scale homage to farmers. Many from the village assisted with the project and Kraemer International supplied crucial supplies and equipment.

Using the French painter Jean-François Millet’s painting “The Sower” as our inspiration, we wanted to depict the simple, primeval picture of the farmer moving across the landscape.

No machinery, no devices, just the human moving across the landscape, sowing and harvesting.

This, it seems to me, is the root of all culture.

The puppet was performed for 2 consecutive weekends by a revolving crew of community volunteers. The puppet lives on as a sculptural installation in downtown Plain.