Katie Baldwin, “Small Patches of Land”

Artist Statement

Small Patches of Land is a pair of intertwining narratives from two women-owned farms in Alabama, connected by the act of saving seed. Jean Mills and her partner Carol are a lesbian couple who founded the first CSA in Alabama in the mid 90’s, and ran the farm until Carol was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Margaret Ann Snow founded Snow’s Bend, an organic farm in Tuscaloosa, in 2004. Soon after Jean and Carol started their farm, they were given heirloom collard seeds by a neighbor who didn’t like who they were, but knew they were farmers. This is how seeds move: from hand to hand. Jean and Carol grew out the seeds, eventually offering Alabama Blue Collards as a crop and making the seeds available through The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Thirty years later, Margaret Ann snow ordered those same collard seeds from the same catalog when she herself decided that she wanted to shepherd a crop from seed to seed.

The text of this book originates in interviews with Margaret Ann Snow and Jean Mills Conducted in the Spring and Summer of 2025. The narratives in this book have different scales: Jean and Carol’s story begins in 1979 when Jean inherited the land and ends after the couple closed the farm and relocated to California. Margaret Ann’s narrative spans one growing season, from planting in September of 2024 to harvesting seeds in May of 2025. The different scales are echoed in the imagery in the book; landscape forms are created from the silhouettes of Margeret Ann’s seeds, imaged by the artists with a powerful microscope at the Alabama Materials Institute. Small Patches of Land was printed in an edition of 25 in 2026 on an etching press and a Vandercook. Colors for this project were matched to Margaret Ann’s collards, harvested in the spring of 2025. Grays were printed with crushed graphite ink. Imagery originated from photographs of collard plants taken at Snow’s Bend Farm and microscopic imaging of seeds harvested by Margaret Ann Snow in spring of 2025. Soil maps and additional language were found in Soil Survey of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, issued in August 1981 from The United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service and Forest Service.

Katie Baldwin

Alabama, USA
katieameliabaldwin.com
IG:  @katieameliabaldwin
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Small Patches of Land
2026

Woodblock, pressure print, letterpress

19 x 25 inches (open)

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