Heidi Zenisek

This piece was created in response to witnessing the catastrophic effects of climate change in the Midwest, specifically on the agriculture industry. Plagued by flood events in recent decades, it is not uncommon for farmers to find a grain bin ripped from its foundation, crumpled like a piece of paper in the hands of Mother Nature, spilling the years yield at her feet. One of these grain bins was collected and erected. This is a memorial commemorating the ongoing battle between Earth and Mankind. A memento of damage and a warning to fear the land. Seed will be shed.

Cary Hill Sculpture Park at Salem Art Works, Salem NY, 2018

These materials of barbed wire, corn, twine, net wrap, hay, cow bones, rope, and soybeans flow from ceramic drainage tile all harvested from a six hundred acre family-share dating back five generations in Solon, Iowa. In an effort to memorialize the stages of life and death and decay so prevalent there, the materials become transformed. It is a materialization of the rapid life cycles and mass migrations of commodity witnessed year after year on the farm. Exaggerations in scale are a reflection of the massive equipment needed to harvest the years' yield.   

So Take to the Fields 

You Midwest Wanderers. 

Barbed Wire Beware. 

Iowa City, Iowa 2015

An 8’ steel truncated pyramid with cast iron corn cobs flowing from the tip. The title is a play on the name of the pornography site “Pornhub.” In contemporary porn, misogyny is a common fetish. Women are depicted being physically & verbally abused rendering them completely helpless. Parallel this with the farmer’s fetishizing of high yields and the need to control and commodify and you get Cornhub; a phallus monument spilling out seed & honoring Man’s gift of insemination!

Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN, 2017