Culture

Pimp my rice paddy

by kate | July 24, 2007 at 07:54 pm

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This is a story about the farmers in an agricultural district in Japan called Aomori, who make brilliant land art installations using different varieties of flowering rice. It is reminiscent of Darko Friz and his amazing large "204" messages in lava and cactuses on a site in the Canary Islands, and also reminding me a bit of the Nazca Lines in terms of scale, though in intricacy these are really notable - huge, vegetably reproductions of ancient woodblock prints. And it's an annual undertaking, which has been ongoing since 1993.

Via Pink Tentacle.

Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety. This year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear (above). It will be visible until the rice is harvested in September.