‘Soil art’ in Mann Lobby Thursday

Aubrey Fine, Kirsten Kurtz and Kelly Hanley prepared the soils to make the paints.
Aubrey Fine, Kirsten Kurtz and Kelly Hanley prepared the soils to make the paints.

Need a study break?  Swing by the Mann Library Lobby on Thursday anytime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and contribute to a mural created with paints made from soil.

“To celebrate World Soil Week this year, we thought it would be appropriate to do something fun and help relieve a little exam-time stress,” says Kirsten Kurtz, manager of the Cornell Soil Health Testing Laboratory who spearheaded the project.

Kurtz is an artist herself who has experimented in the past with extracting pigments from soils to make paint. Last weekend, she and volunteers crushed and sieved soils ranging from light tan to reddish brown to near black. If you join in Thursday, part of the activity will be turning those soils into paint.

“Or you can just grab a brush for a few minutes and help us fill the in the scene we’ll have sketched out on the canvases,” says Kurtz.

click image for .pdf version of poster

.pdf version of poster

 

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