Frances Whitehead is an award-winning transdisciplinary environmental artist who integrates art with plants, soil, food, and agricultural sustainability. Having spent much of her career in cities of the Great Lakes Basin, she moved to New Mexico five years ago because she wanted to live in a dry climate and work on what she calls “arid reworlding” — which is all about responding to climate change by building a healthy future that uses less water. On a trip to Mexico, her life was changed by an encounter with the Nopal cactus, which has been a staple of Mexican culture for millennia. This led to her project, NOPALOGY, which addresses the potential role of Nopal as a future food in colder climates. In this podcast we explore the work with Nopal, as well as the role of the artist in agriculture and the food system, the latest research on Nopal, and the new field trials she’s initiated in Santa Fe.

 

2’43 Frances’s background in art and agriculture
5’05 “What do artists know?”
5’52 moving to Chicago and seeing its environmental degradation
8’25 artists are lateral in their thinking, irreverent, disobedient, don’t follow the rules, and find problems and uncover connections
9’23 embedded artist in Chicago working to remediate abandoned gas station
10’42 how phytoremediation works
11’31 politics got in the way
13’21 moving from Chicago to Santa Fe, from a water-rich envitonment to the desert
14’53 “arid reworlding”
15’29 dwelling projects–turning their own home into sustainable spaces
16’31 Casa Agua
17’38 Xeriscaping
19’05 going to Mexico and discovering the nopal
20’11 going to Milp’alta, the center of Nopal growing
22’09 all the things they do with the Nopal plant in Mexico
22’59 prickly pear produces both fruit and vegetable
23’11 how Nopal seeds work
23’58 sustainable/unsustainable nopal growing methods
25’16 Nopal as important future food
27’25 the importance of spineless cactus, especially if it’s used for lifestock fodder
28’26 looking for a cold-hardy nopal variety
29’51 John Cushman Nopal researcher in Reno, NV
31’22 tasting the nopal varieties
33’20 long growing season nopal pads in Mexico–it’s all about the pruning
34’34 you have to fertilize nopal if you want a vegetable orchard
35’28 creating a food culture
37’04 how do we capture all the knowledge about growing and eating nopal…creating the Nopal Growers Community Archive
38’52 eating delicious nopal stew
40’30 “operator’s manual” for the nopal
42’10 nopal snacks
43’13 the anti-diabetic property of nopal
43’46 making biofuels from nopal
44’17 drought fodder
47’00 intercropping nopal with mesquite trees
48’35 Reunity Resources test plot for nopal
50’56 building a nopal work force
52’17 in Mexico everyone has nopal in their garden that they use for food
55’34 using nopal pigments and dyes in art and textiles
56’19 what does the plant know? Is it us using the plant or the plant using us?
56’40 “The Nopal knows how to make community”
58’32 Frances making drawings with nopal pigment
59’34 building a community, calling for partners, Frances Whitehead site