Piper Snowber
Strawberry Story Cloth
Digital Embroidery, Hand Embroidery, Screen Printing
29.5” x16”
This story cloth is meant to serve as a window into the history of Ventura County, and how the food that nourishes us is connected to those that work the land. On one side of the cloth is a series of images of farm workers harvesting strawberries, surrounded by the stems of strawberries I consumed. It reads, “We are sculpted by the hands and mouths of our ancestors, from the same clays which strawberries grow. The violence of the harvest is held in the memory of the flesh.” On the other side of the cloth is an image of the San Buenaventura Mission, overlaid with embroidery of the areas of Oxnard that are sprayed with toxic pesticides. Every year, more than 5 million pounds of agricultural pesticides are used in Ventura County. Hundreds of thousands of homes and over 100 elementary schools are located within 2.5 miles of pesticide use areas. Communities of color are disproportionately affected by pesticide use and each year, children and adults suffer from health conditions such as rashes, immunotoxicity, cancer, asthma, and more. Data shows that within these communities, pesticides are more widely used, and they have higher levels of toxicity. Ventura County grows a variety of crops, strawberries being one of the most well-known. However, what is less well-known and recognized, is the labor of the farm workers that spend hours every day, no matter the conditions, picking the food we consume. The roots of Ventura County’s agricultural industry trace back to the 1700s, when Saint Junipero Serra and Padre Pedro Benito Cambon built the San Buenaventura Mission in 1782. The mission was a large agricultural producer, and Chumash were forced to do the work of growing and harvesting the crops. As agriculture has continued to be a major part of Ventura County’s economy, the abuse and mistreatment of those who work the land has continued as well. we run our eyes over the scars of our land as we pull apart bits of the earth, just to eat them, just to taste them. we are left with cells that multiply, children with swollen lungs, forest fires, suicide, polluted waters, blindness, immunotoxicity, loss of diversity, birth defects, neurological disorders, soil degradation and we wonder where the bees went? what feeds us if it is not the hands of those who work the land? the hands sow the seeds and the industry mechanizes the body makes it an imperfect machine through the branches of olive trees the stalks of lima beans through the core of the sugar beets and the metal that extracts their sweetness (sakharo) through the crust of the earth which holds oil sugar cuts deeper than skin hands and tongues are coated with the sticky red porous flesh of the strawberry and wounds weep here, wounds weep where the strawberries grow