Consumptive Use

This piece was displayed as part of Doug Tolman's MFA exhibition "Generative Spaces". "Consumptive Use is a simple installation that invites viewers to sit on a bale of Alfalfa (SOA while watching a time-based imagery of the crop being watered. The 15'x15' room is enveloped with the smell of freshly cut Alfalfa and stereo sound of pivot irrigation. The Great Salt Lake Strike Team Report (2022 notes that 62% of total water depleted from the watershed is from agriculture, most of which is Alfalfa. A majority of that Alfalfa is exported out of our watershed, for a relatively small percentage of the state of Utah's GDP - just .2%. We are exporting a large percentage of our water for a small percentage of our livelihood. Fingerpointing exists in the conservation community and adjacent circles - a lot of it towards alfalfa producers. Few people I talk to have sat on a bale of alfalfa or experienced the feeling of sitting in a field of it, engrossed in the smell. Consumptive Use sits in the space between conflicting narratives, allowing those who don't have a relationship with Alfalfa to build one, and asking those who do have a relationship with it to evaluate it. I have perspectives, views, and opinions, but those are not placed in front of the viewer as empirical or didactic information, they are presented in a space that allows people of competing views to respond - dialectically." Statement from the artist. / SOA; From the Sevier watershed, made of organic material, altered by a human.