Second Annual Soil Fest at White Feather Farm
Soil Fest is a three day celebration of soil at White Feather Farm in Saugerties, NY. This second annual festival includes live performances, workshops and food intersecting art, science and ecology. Performing live are the Dust Bowl Faeries, Arm of the Sea Puppet Theater and Lisa Schonberg. We’re excited to offer artist-led workshops with Claire Pentecost, Brooke Singer and Allie Wist. Experience making biochar with Bill Hilgendorf and tasting alternative grain beers with Kevin VanBlarcum of West Kill Brewing. Food demos and offerings will be provided by Atina Foods and Ground Up Food Truck.
Festival Schedule
Friday// July 21
-
Featured Artists: Lisa Schonberg and Allie Wist
2:00pm-4:30 pm
“Sensory Kinship of the Third Kind” is a field-based workshop led by artists Lisa Schonberg and Allie Wist with a focus on mushrooms and fungal networks. By using multi-sensory means of communication, like smell, taste and sound, Schonberg and Wist conduct a series of exercises to stretch our observational skills and reveal fungal worlds across the farm.
Lisa Schonberg is a composer and percussionist creating sound works based on ecological research. Informed by her background in entomology, Schonberg is interested in how listening to cryptic sound can reveal and challenge assumptions about insects and other overlooked soundmakers. Her recent work includes studies of ant bioacoustics with Brazilian entomologists, old-growth forests in Oregon, endangered Hawaiian Hylaeus bees, mushrooms, and plastics. Allie ES Wist is an artist-scholar working on speculative sensory narratives related to environmental humanities and Anthropocene studies. Her work includes edible and olfactory artifacts, often as part of multi-media installation works. She has an MA in Food Studies from NYU and her work and workshops have been featured by Honolulu Biennial, The Wellcome Collection, MIT, and Pioneer Works.
-
6:00pm-7:30pm
Drummer, composer and ecological sound artist Lisa Schonberg will present a solo performance of percussion and electronic music featuring and responding to soil soundscapes, with a focus on insects. Her system-based composition and improvisation ask us to reconsider our relations with insects.
Lisa Schonberg is a composer and percussionist creating sound works based on ecological research. Informed by her background in entomology, Schonberg is interested in how listening to cryptic sound can reveal and challenge assumptions about insects and other overlooked soundmakers. Her recent work includes studies of ant bioacoustics with Brazilian entomologists, old-growth forests in Oregon, endangered Hawaiian Hylaeus bees, mushrooms, and plastics.
Saturday // July 22
-
Featured Artist: Claire Pentecost
12:00pm-2:00pm
Soil chromatography is a photographic and visual method to assess soil health first used in the early 20th century by the Russian botanist, Mikhail Tsvet, and later embraced by biodynamic farmers. Chromatography produces a unique portrait of a given soil. Artist Claire Pentecost introduces the process and how to understand soils as local with specific histories intertwined with human activity.
Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer who researches the living matters of the unified multi-dimensional being that animates the critical zone of our planet. Her work is driven by research and inspired by questions of form. She has exhibited work at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany; 13th Istanbul Biennial; White Chapel, London; 3rd Mongolian Land Art Biennial; MCA Chicago; MSU Broad Museum; Higher Pictures, New York; and many others. Together with Brian Holmes she directs Watershed Art & Ecology, an experimental cultural space in Chicago.
-
Featured Artist: Brooke Singer
2:30pm-4:30pm
Carbon Sponge is an interdisciplinary collaboration to further our understanding of soil as a vital and living resource and dynamic force for change. With a network of farms in upstate New York, Carbon Sponge is tracking soil characteristics related to soil carbon storage and soil health. In this workshop, Brooke Singer, Carbon Sponge lead and Director of Farm Innovation at White Feather Farm, will share recent discoveries of the soil microbes at the center of the carbon sequestration story and participants learn about several soil testing tools used by Carbon Sponge.
Brooke Singer engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, gardens, workshops, photographs, maps, installations and public art that often involves participation in pursuit of social change. She is Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and Director of Farm Innovation at White Feather Farm. Formerly she was a fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2010-11), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co-founder of La Casita Verde (2013–), a living lab and garden in Brooklyn, NY. From 2018-2020 she was a research affiliate with the Groffman Research Group, Environmental Sciences Initiative, Advanced Scientific Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
-
Led by Kevin Van Blarcum of West Kill Brewing
5:00pm-6:30pm
In this beer tasting, participants sample a range of delicious brews while learning about the brewing processes and beer ingredients with a focus on local grain alternatives. At White Feather Farm, we are growing both sorghum and rice, two grains that will be highlighted during this tasting. Grains are nutritional for humans and have the capacity to feed our soil.
-
7:30pm-9:00pm
A faerie-tale fusion of gothic polka, dark carnival and angsty folk music, Dust Bowl Faeries are a New York based cabaret-inspired indie rock band. The band's eclectic repertoire draws inspiration from circus songs, murder ballads, vaudeville, jazz and klezmer music. Accordion, musical saw, acoustic guitar and electric bass combine to create the Dust Bowl Faeries otherworldly sound.
Dust Bowl Faeries have performed extensively in the U.S. from New York to New Orleans and beyond. The band released their new EP, CARNIVAL DUST, in January 2023, featuring harpist Mikaela Davis. Previously, the Faeries released two EP's and two full albums, THE PLAGUE GARDEN (2020), and a self titled debut album featuring rock legend Tommy Stinson (Replacements) and Melora Creager (Rasputina).
-
12pm-8pm
Local food truck, La Ruta Del Sol, will be providing Ecuadorian food and drinks for purchase during Soil Fest on Saturday 7/22.
Sunday // July 23
-
Featuring Carrie Dashow and Suresh Pillai (Atina Foods)
12:00-3:00pm
In this workshop, participants will make easy to ferment foods with harvest from White Feather Farm. Carrie Dashow and Suresh Pillai of Atina Foods first demonstrate a quick salt ferment for veggies that are in season and growing at the farm. In the second portion of the workshop, the two will share a recipe for fermented sorghum dosas or crepe-like pancakes naturally fermented that combines beans and grain with fenugreek. The group will enjoy the food together at the end of the workshop and take jars home for later!
Atina Foods out of Catskill, NY, specializes in crafting fermented and preserved condiments for preserving local harvests with a global taste. “It’s nice to eat farm to table, but it’s divine to live through the winter!.” Carrie Dashow and Suresh Pillai both come from cultural arts backgrounds (including food, events, exhibits, museum building, clinical herbalism, art, technology and performance) with intention for connection, education and, eventually, practicality. Join them for new explorations into food and the deep local.
-
Featuring Bill Hilgendorf with Muriel Stallworth
3:00pm-5:00pm
This hands-on workshop, co-facilitated by Bill Hilgendorf and Muriel Stallworth, is an introduction to biochar and the pyrolysis technique. Participants choose among various sizes and types of wood to make a set of charcoal drawing sticks. Bill will discuss biochar's role in climate change mitigation as well as innovative biochar applications and Muriel will lead the group in drawing experiments.
Bill Hilgendorf grew up in Boston and studied Industrial Design at RISD. He co-founded the multi-disciplinary design firm Uhuru in 2003 in Brooklyn NY. For two decades Bill has employed design to tell the story of discarded objects and underutilized materials. With a growing obsession with biochar, he co-founded Eldr Six in 2021 as a launchpad dedicated to developing and showcasing upcycled carbon negative materials and products. Bill is currently the Sustainability and Biochar Director at White Feather Farm.
Muriel Stallworth grew up in France where she obtained a Master’s Degree in Education and started her teaching career. After a ten-year hiatus training as a glass painter and subsequently working as a stained glass conservator, Muriel returned to education by joining the founding board of the International School of Brooklyn (ISB) in 2004. Today, combining the roles of sustainability coordinator and art teacher at ISB, and education director at the White Feather Farm, Muriel’s goals are to provide every member of the community with opportunities to engage and connect with nature.
-
6:00pm - 7:00pm
Riparian Rhapsody is a puppet extravaganza that dives into Catskill ecology to reveal the intricate interactions between Forest and Stream, lyrically making the case for protecting streamside buffer zones. Featuring stunning visuals, live music, and a singing Bear, this production is designed for family audiences.
Currently in its 41st season, Arm-of-the-Sea creates original works of mask & puppet theater as an antidote to ubiquitous electronic media and consumer culture. The company’s hybrid performance style sparks wonder, offers insight, and illuminates relations between humans and the life-support networks of this blue-ocean planet. To reach diverse audiences, Arm-of-the-Sea often presents its shows outside the bounds and buildings of institutional theater.