Email: Report from a colonial farm

Brece Honeycutt, a friend and colleague who divides her time between New York and a farm at the foot of the Berkshires in Massachusetts, recently sent a newsy update about what she’s been doing in her barn-studio on the farm. Honeycutt is fascinated by the lives of the people who lived there before she and her husband bought the place, and her extensive research into the lives of our colonial ancestors has long informed her work. We often communicate via old-fashioned letters, but this email included wonderful images of new work that she agreed to share with readers.

{Image at top: Brece Honeycutt, second-hand hankerchief, hand dyed and embroidered, 2016.]

Brece writes: “Over the past year, I have been making my own �raw materials�: over 100 direct monoprints on hemp paper made with black walnut ink and tea; 100 hapa-zome prints (natural pigments of plant material printed directly onto paper) on hemp paper; old book pages printed with natural materials; and larger, heavier paper printed using the ecoprint technique (prints made using natural dyes and plant material gathered from the land around my studio). Last summer, M and I discovered a cache of letters from the mid-nineteenth century in the walls of our 1753 house. When I laid out these crumbling, faded and stained envelopes and pages, there was a visual connection with my rudimentary prints, as if the work I had been making could have been found alongside these letters in the wall by some future occupant. During the winter months [when there aren’t so many farm chores], I plan to explore the link between the old and the seemingly-old in a new series, using materials gleaned from the land….”

I love the old-fashioned flavor of Brece’s writing; it’s as if she were not sitting at a computer but rather at a little writing desk with pen and ink, gazing out at the fields, immersed in thought. Her latest blog post at on a colonial farm begins “The time draws nigh for collecting herbs for drying and dyeing. Whilst reading Robin Wall Kimmerer�s thought-provoking book, Braiding Sweet Grass, I came across these guidelines for the Honorable Harvest….” Brece’s work carries forward the legacy of the colonial settlers–the hopes and hardships of our early immigrants.

Related posts:
Brece Honeycutt�s book report
Food and beverage art: Coates, FOODshed, Honeycutt, Beavers, and more

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