The Graduate Program and Sustainable Agriculture, College of Design, and the MFA program in Creative Writing & Environment invite you to join us for:

"Home Sweet Diversified Farm" with Jean Graham and Anna Geyer, 

facilitated by Mary Swander

Jean Graham will present a visual zine documentation of her AgArts residency  at the Anna and Dave Geyer farm near Oxford, IA. Anna Geyer will answer questions about her sustainable farm practices and many entrepreneurial endeavors. Mary Swander, AgArts executive director will facilitate. 

ZOOM LINK:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82866959236

Jean Graham: Currently living in Austin, Texas, Jean Graham is a native Midwesterner with roots in the deep Iowa soil. She attended farm-based Scattergood School in rural West Branch, which sparked her love for making forms out of clay and inspired her life-long interest in ways that art can integrate with, impact, and create community. She has made art happen throughout the country as an exhibiting artist, teacher, museum curator, and public art project manager. Her artworks are included in museum collections and in her own neighborhood. She has an undergraduate degree from New College of Florida and an MFA from the University of Michigan. These days she has time to be an avid gardener.   

Anna Geyer farms with her husband Dave on a farm west of Iowa City, IA.  In addition to participating in the general work of the farm, one of Anna’s significant contributions over the years has been to create a series of agritourism enterprises.  Beginning with cut flowers for u-pick and weddings (Anna’s Cutting Garden), then moving into artisan wood-fired bread, (Crust & Crumb), wood-fired pizza events (Geyer’s Oven), a folk school and retreat center (Land Alliance) with lodging, camping and glamping experiences on the farm.  Most recently, she has begun working to transition some of their acres to agroforestry, focusing on nuts, fruit, fiber, and natural dyes.  Anna also teaches entrepreneurship through the Land Alliance Folk School Entrepreneurship Program.

Mary Swander is the Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre troupe that performs dramas about food, farming, and the wider rural environment. She is also the Executive Director of AgArts, a nonprofit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts. Her latest book is The Maverick M.D.: Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and His Fight for a New Treatment for Cancer (New Spring Press).

The former Poet Laureate of Iowa, Swander is an award-winning author who has been given grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Whiting Foundation. She has published scores of books of poetry and nonfiction as well as essays, magazine articles, individual poems and radio commentaries in such places as National Public Radio, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, and Poetry Magazine. She is best known for her poetry book Driving the Body Back and for her memoirs Out of this World and The Desert Pilgrim.