Emma Kline and Amy Youngs, of the Living Art & Ecology Lab, teamed up with Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) to celebrate the first Ohio Soil Health Week with an exhibition of soil-inspired artworks by local artists.
Those Who Feed Us, exhibition opening November 13, 2025 in the Hopkins Hall Project Space and Lobby, at the Ohio State University.
More information on Ohio Soil Health Week and other events are on the official OSHW Website.
Documentation of each of the artworks is shared below, along with the artist statements about their work.
Materials: wooden pallet, masonite, metal casters, coconut choir, glass panels, bamboo supports, plexiglass cube, amended soil, winter rye grass seed.
“If not for the soil, … excessive amounts of carbon would remain in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas causing climate change”.1
Soil has the capacity to absorb and sequester carbon for very long periods of time. This process is a collaboration between living plant material and the soil it grows in. Plant material absorbs and holds carbon from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis. As plants decompose, this carbon is absorbed into the soil.
Scientists have estimated that agricultural soils have the capacity to sequester over a billion additional tons of carbon annually by adopting several simple agricultural practices. If perennials and cover crops are planted after the main harvest, soils would have the ability to sequester carbon year-round. Additionally, if ‘no till’ or ‘low till’ practices are adopted instead of more conventional ways of farming, soil will remain undisturbed – providing long-term storage for the carbon rather than immediately re-releasing carbon back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
This method of carbon storage not only provides one more tool in the battle against the effects of greenhouse gases but also enhances the overall health of the soil, which leads to higher production yields.
“Do Not Disturb” is a visual representation of soil-based carbon storage when paired with the popular cover crop, winter rye.
1. https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/soil-based-carbon-sequestration
Tipping Point consists of a large glass jar terrarium with soil and living plants, fungus, and moss inside. The glass jar is slowly rotating (around 1 revolution per week). This creates a habitat inside which undergoes cataclysmic shifts intermittently as the angle becomes too extreme for the soil and life to hold on. Just as on planet Earth, great shifts occur, sometimes slowly and sometimes all at once, which force a reset of the system. Although this disrupts and destroys the existing equilibrium, new life takes root and starts again.
Beneath our feet, where soil embraces the remnants of words, the quiet dance of microbes brings forgotten tales to life. These tiny architects of earth breathe life into pages once crafted from trees, those silent giants who once held the sky. Now, books return to soil, transformed into wheatgrass planters. Bound pages soften, dissolve, and blend, as carbon, air, and microbes reunite with roots, writing a new story of life from leaf to stem. With each blade of wheatgrass rising, a chapter of nature’s reclamation is penned—a reminder that life, like stories, cycles through renewal.
Special thanks to Joshua Gagliardi for his help in laser cutting the forms within the books.
SIGNS is an experimental film and public artwork that challenges us to rethink the critical messages we often overlook in urban environments. This piece compels us to confront the hidden environmental impacts of our daily activities, such as the relentless use of cars and their significant carbon emissions. It also asks us to look at soil and the symbiotic relationships that microbes, and bacteria weave, in the support of living ecosystems.
to impress: addresses the patriarchal position of femininity as inherently weak and fragile. Influenced by Richard Serra’s early work, specifically his Splash Pieces, and the macho nature of his process (throwing molten led into the edges of rooms), to impress: examines the notions of what strength and endurance mean, using materials that are familiar, common, and tactile—i.e., the body and dirt. The title of the work speaks both to the action and the question, what is deemed “impressive”?
Using soil, charcoal, and other organic material hand-collected from burn scars, roadsides, and streambeds throughout the Western United States, I allow the land itself to be a looking glass to examine interconnections among women and non-human nature. Animalization of women and feminization of nature is used to justify their exploitation. My work questions and co-opts that dehumanization through embedding personal and collective histories within the mythology of the American West. Allegories of wildfire, wolves, and other archetypal characters from my own girlhood in the Northern Rockies become means of exploration for environmental concerns, gender roles, and place-based identity. Carefully rendered drawings and prints of stark scenes of predator-prey relationships, and the cycles of birth, life, and death remind glossy ideals can be as sinister as they are seductive. My work resides in the space between fantasy and memory, the grey areas of what we wished happened versus what actually took place.
Photographic installation with maps and fiber, 4’x6’
‘Parent material’ is the term used by soil scientists to describe the geologic or organic material that is transformed by climate, biology and time into the living matrix we know as soil. Just as soil ‘parent material’ lays the foundation for diverse soils around the world, shaping their characteristics and potential, human ‘parent material’ provides the biological foundation and sustenance that nurtures growth in every child. Ultimately, soils are the parents of Humanity. This work shares observations of parent material and soils from different parts of the globe: Washington, Colorado, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Maine and Iceland.
Cyanotype on woven cotton, dimensions variable
For a decade I have been using cyanotype on cotton cloth to document the indigenous plants lost when developers bulldoze and build on open wild spaces in my local environment (in this case German Village and the near South Side of Columbus). I go to the actual site right before the bulldozers come and I document all native plant specimens I can find. I’ve never exhibited them as they have been my way to document all of the Wild that is lost in development and, also, in some way act as an outlet for my anger at what is lost.
I recently began to develop this documentation to include Rewilding projects. This is my most recent work which shows botanical specimens (plants and grasses) being used to rewild 30 acres of prairie outside of Fargo, North Dakota. These cyanotypes were done in the prairie itself. I collected the plant specimens, laid the treated pieces of cloth on cow pats and ground bee mounds, arranged a specimen or a grouping of like specimens on the cloth and let the sun and the light, shadow, and the wind of the prairie go to work. I developed the cyanotypes in buckets of rain water from the Ekre Historic Farm and Preserve. The plants used for these cyanotypes are those from the second year reseeding (and seed spiking) of a four year cycle to create a prairie that will never be used for agriculture.
Green Acres is a cooperative boardgame where all players collaborate with one another to reach a common goal. During the game, players must respond to another algae bloom that contaminated the water supply for cities along Lake Erie, as the State of Ohio has asked landowners to help in preventing this from happening again. The environmental and economic toll of an algae bloom is significant – and the region may not be able to withstand another one. The players are all farmers in the Lake Erie watershed who will need to help contribute to the goal of preventing the next major algae bloom by keeping phosphorous out of the Lake. On your farms, you’ll grow the crops that contribute to the local economy, while also capturing the phosphorous in grasslands or wetlands downstream.
You also have the option to invest in upgrades for your land uses. These upgrades do things like increase revenue from land, improve soil quality, or better keep phosphorous out of the Lake. To win the game, you have 15 years to create a better Lake Erie watershed. One that is in harmony with nature and no new algae blooms, using appropriate techniques to take care of farms, and is also economically vibrant. It will be a challenge to change the culture around land use, but with the fate of the region in the balance you have no choice but to meet this challenge.
Using a microscope camera and audio/visualization techniques, we are tracking a population of springtails inside a custom-made terrarium. Springtails (collembola) are abundant arthropods, found in soils throughout the world. They are important to soil health, as they graze on bacteria and fungi, disperse spores, and keep the nutrients cycling throughout soil.
To help humans notice their individual interactions, we projected them large and programmed colored dots to share their varying speeds; with blue dots showing their slower movements and red dots showing the fastest.
The sounds are also changing live, based on their movements. We don’t know what the sounds of this soil, or these springtails are actually like, so we have developed a kind of speculative sonification based on the sounds of a forest. Like forest sounds and like ambient music, soil is present but fades from our notice most of the time. When we do pay attention to the complex life in soil ecosystems, we can be rewarded with a sense of wonder.
Participants can interact with this system by moving the computer mouse to experience an altered soundscape – and perhaps imagine themselves as a tiny cursor in the world of the springtails. Video documentation.
Thousands of composting worms and arthropods and billions of microbes live inside this worm-shaped wagon. They are making rich compost from waste generated from my home, such as cardboard, wilted lettuce, banana peels, apple cores, dead plants, tea bags and used coffee grounds. This composting ecosystem includes a colony of red-wiggler worms (Eisenia Fetida), who have lived with me for thirty years. We have shared many meals. The fertilizer they make is fed to my houseplants, herbs, tomato plants, and lettuces. To publicly celebrate soil critters, I have mobilized my worm bin onto a wagon. Worms do their business in the dark; they do not announce to us that they offer solutions to climate change (by processing food waste without emitting methane gas, a major problem in landfills) and they do not speak about their important role in circulating nutrients and healthy microbes in soils. I’m sharing this on their behalf because I hope other households will develop regenerative relationships with composting worms. Sharing nutrients with household worm ecosystem is a slow, steady way to reconnect one’s sense of self within the larger web of life.
See documentation of the Teatime With Soil Kin event, where we drank tea and considered what we can learn from the billions of soil organisms who co-create the healthy conditions for plants to grow in – and in turn, nourish us.
