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Sustenance for the soulBy RICHIE DAVIS

Seeds of Solidarity Farm is knownby anyone who’s been there notonly for vegetables and herbs, butfor embracing art and being en-veloped by a spiritual sense.

Rows of vegetables, surrounding trees,greenhouses and other places around theland are enhanced by portraits of inspiringfigures such as Mahatma Gandhi, ThichNhat Hanh, Wally and Juanita Nelson,Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, and AngelaDavis along with quotations from theirteachings.

The deep connection between growingfood and growing sensibility that farmersRicky Baruc and Deb Habib embrace be-comes clearer a few miles away through anew exhibit at the Augusta Savage Gallery.

“Seeking Sacred on the Farm,” featur-ing works by Baruc, Habib and their son,Levi Baruch, will be on exhibit at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts-Amherst campusfrom Feb. 9 through March 10. There willbe a Feb. 9 reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Theexhibit includes Baruc’s woodwork — pri-marily meditation benches — as well aspottery and photographs by Habib andmandalas by Baruch.

An interactive mandala centerpiece,which visitors can embellish with objects,demonstrates that like their organic farm,this artistic display is a family affair.

Woven into the exhibit, in fact, alongwith photographs capturing views of the30-acre farm, will be excerpts from a bookthe couple is writing, “Making Love WhileFarming: A Field Guide to a Life of Pas-sion and Purpose.”

“It’s honoring the land, honoring those

‘Seeking Sacred on the Farm,’ features photography, pottery, mandalas and woodwork by local family

RECORDER STAFF/MATT BURKHARTTDeb Habib, owner of Seeds of Solidarity with her husband Ricky Baruc, stands in one of the greenhouses holding one of her photographs that will be featured in her family’s exhibit, titled“Seeking the Sacred on the Farm,” at the UMass Fine Arts Center.

RECORDER STAFF/MATT BURKHARTTLevi Baruch holding one of his hand-drawn mandalas with his father Ricky Baruc and some of Baruc’s wooden furniture in the workshop at theirfamily ’s Seeds of Solidarity in Orange. Their pieces will be featured with photographs by Baruc’s mother, Deb Habib, in “Seeking the Sacred onthe Farm” at the UMass Fine Arts Center.

FAR LEFT: A detailof a corn inlay on ameditation benchmade by RickyBaruc in hisworkshop will befeatured in “Seek ingthe Sacred on theFarm .”

LEFT: Some of RickyB a ru c ’s chairs,meditation benchesand candle holdersin his workshop willbe featured in theexhibit .

RECORDER STAFFPHOTOS/MATT BURKHARTT

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who inspire us who live this life anddo this work,” says Habib, whosework is primarily for the nonprofitSeeds of Solidarity Foundation. Witha mission “to awaken the poweramong youth, schools and familiesto grow food everywhere to trans-form hunger to health and createresilient lives and communities,”the foundation brings area teens to-gether each summer as interns tolearn about growing food, work inthe community building green-houses, raise bed gardens and teachpeople how to grow healthful pro-duce themselves.

“Art becomes a way of beingmore attentive to these things andrepresent those relationships, thoseways of being in the world in cre-ative and ceremonial ways.”

She points to the iconic personal-ities honored by images and writ-ings around the farm as activistswho “unite the activism, simplicityand spirited way of being in theworld.” It may seem hard to imag-ine that any farmer would have timeor energy left to create works of art,but Habib — who has a doctoratefrom UMass in cultural and curricu-lum reform — says, “We have tokeep doing things to re-nourish our-selves if we’re in it for the long haul.Art and being creative definitelyfeeds the soul, which you need tokeep doing other kinds of work. It’sa challenge, but that kind of balanceis essential if you’re going to be in itfor it for a long time and live lifealong the way. You have to make thetime. I don’t know that it’s a choice.”

Habib — whose role is in prepar-ing and serving the food for the fam-ily, for SOL (Seeds of Leadership)Garden interns — contributes herpottery to the exhibit, which addmeaning to the connection withfood. She began working with clayas a child, and says, “I always feltthat was the place I was drawn.”

Bar uc’s pieces in the exhibit in-clude meditation benches, altars,candle holders and chairs craftedfrom laurel and birch around theOrange farm and cedar from Mon-tague. His woodwork, using nativewood, features inlaid symbols ofground native corn and plants as anexpression of his multi-dimensionalspiritual practices.

Baruc dropped out of studyingmarine-biology in college when hehad an epiphany — he didn’t knowhow to work with his hands — andturned his focus for the next 30 yearsto working as a carpenter, wood-worker and farmer. “In the forest, Icut cedar trees by hand and thenmill them into boards. In the fields, Igrow ancient heirloom corn, wheat,sage and tobacco and use these toinlay sacred symbols on meditationbenches, altars and furniture. I workwith the natural curves that the for-est creates to make furniture andart,” Baruc said.

The farmer-artist added, “I inlayall my work with crops from theland — the sacred corns we grow,sacred tobacco, sacred sage.They’re all really powerful pieces ofthe farm, mixed with an epoxy.”

His benches are designed withvarious sacred designs such as theHundu “om” and the lotus alongwith the use of hot peppers, sageand ancient heirloom Naragansett,Massasoit, Hopi blue or Glass Gemcorn kernals ground with tobacco,peppers and more. The merging ofthese elements combine the two

worlds of farm and forest.Baruc, who meditates regularly,

just as Habib practices yoga, notesthat the physical work of farming isin itself a form of meditation andcreativity. He notes that while hed i d n’t grow up doing woodworkingor other crafts, “it’s really importantfor my sanity. It balances things out.I love the ‘physicalness’ of farming,and I love the art process — creat-ing in the head — so the mind hassome creativity going on.”

In fact, he — like Habib — seesthe necessity of fostering that bal-ance between physical work andartwork as a release if farming isgoing to endure.

“If we talk about the need formore people to be growing food,which is critical. How do we farm inbalance, in a way that we’re notkilling ourselves?” he asks. “In thiscountry, we have a way takingsomething we love and turning itinto a business. In other cultures, inBali, in Vietnam, there are altars inthe fields. It’s all artistic. If we’renot having time to meditate or timeto make art, we’ll end up in sameplace conventional agriculture hastaken us.”

A 17-year-old Mahar RegionalSchool student, Baruch — whosename has an added H, partially toreclaim the original family spelling

and partially to honor his mother’sname — will have several of hispen-and-ink mandalas on display inthe exhibit.

One particularly striking wheel,suggested by his father, has a corntheme depicting kernels, leaves andnative symbols.

“All the mandalas take on theirown form,” said Baruch, who hasbeen creating them for the past cou-ple of years. “It’s like a meditativeprocess,” he says of the both labor-ing in the fields and creating the in-tricate spiritual, ritual symbols.

“A lot of shapes I work with, theshapes used in mandalas, are obvi-ously inspired by nature.” Bar uch

says. “It’s a pretty organic process.I rarely have any preconceived con-cept about what a piece is going tolook like.”

The organic nature of the workforms another intricate connectionwith sustainable farming practices.

“I see my work as a connectionwith what Ricky and Debbie are do-ing. It all kind of intertwines,” hesaid. His interactive exhibit center-piece combined with the rest will al-low their “pieces (to) radiate out.”

Baruch, who visited native reser-vations in Arizona with his parentsand has studied various cultures,says he took an interest in Indianrituals surrounding mandala cre-ation and destruction. “The womentake corn meal and white stone, cre-ating pretty intricate designs infront of their home, and throughoutthe day, it will be destroyed: Peoplestep on them, birds pick at corn-meal, so by the end of day, it’s de-stroyed. They sweep them away,and the next day, they create more.Creating something and allowing itto be destroyed is definitely inter-esting to me, and I will try to bringthat to the show,” Baruch said.

Habib and Baruc see the exhibitas a way of sharing their way ofcombining sustainable farming andself-nourishing art with rituals thatalso provide sustenance for thesoul.

“It became a great thing to do to-g e t h e r, ” says Habib of sharing thefullness of their lives like the ritualof sharing a meal. The mandala atthe center of the exhibit will itself besymbolic of the kind of open circlesthey use in opening and closing ritu-als with its SOL Garden interns,and symbolic of the balance theyfeel is central in life.

“It’s reflective of our way of be-ing,” Habib adds. “That’s part ofwhy we do art, bringing the ele-ments of daily ceremony into ourdaily lives, and into our work.”

E XHIBIT FROM C1

Brick Church Music Series continues

By ANDY CASTILLORecorder Staff

T he First Church of Deerfield’sBrick Church Music Seriescontinues Sunday, Feb. 12, fea-

turing violin and piano concertos.According to Jean Pit-

man Turner, the concertseries’ artistic director,Taiwanese-American vio-linist Sirena Huang, 22,and pianist Pi-Hsun Shihwill perform at 3 p.m. in-side the historic brickchurch on Old Main Street.

Beginning at age 4,Huang studied violin at theHartt School in Hartford,Conn. – the same musicschool Pi-Hsun Shihteaches at. Currently, she’s a schol-arship student studying at Juillard.

She has been a featured soloistwith the Sao Paulo State Symphony,The Hartt Symphony, and the Mex-ico State Symphony Orchestra, forwhom she served as the principal

keyboardist.Shih has also taught at other

schools and universities, includingMount Holyoke.

“Both musicians are exception-ally talented and are seasoned per-formers in Europe, Asia, and the

United States,” Tur nersaid, noting that “they willbe playing music byStravinsky, Paganini, HeZhan Hao and Chen Gang,Brahms, and Ravel.”

The concert series isfunded through donations.Following the concert,there will be refreshmentsheld next door at DeerfieldAcademy ’s Caswell Li-brary. A $10 donation at thedoor is suggested.

For more information, contactTurner at 413-774-2657.

You can reach Andy Castilloat: acastillo@recorder.com or413-772-0261, ext. 263 On Twitter:@AndyCCastillo

Violinist Sirena Huang and pianistPi-Hsun Shih will perform Feb. 12

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

RECORDER STAFF/ANDY CASTILLOThe First Church of Deerfield in Old Deerfield, also known as the Old Brick Church .

RECORDER STAFF/MATT BURKHARTTRicky Baruc, owner of Seeds of Solidarity with his wife Deb Habib, in his workshop with some of his wooden candle holders as well as other pieces thatwill be featured in his family’s exhibit.

RECORDER STAFF/MATT BURKHARTTSome of Ricky Baruc’s candle holders in his workshop will be featured with other pieces in his family ’s exhibitat UMass Fine Art Center.