Unplowed Realities

September 10- November 19, 2026

Reception: Sept. 18, 5:30-7pm

Artists: Joan Brace O'Neal and community activist, experimental farmer and creative George Shenk

Unplowed Realities  explores farm, land, and animals as interconnected systems of survival, care, and sacrifice. It considers our relationship to land, food, and the economy at a moment when farmers face increasing pressure simply to sustain their farms. Small farms don't prioritize scale and extraction. They are often grounded in diversification, care, and local food systems, these farms emphasize sustainability, resilience, and interdependence. Their labor sustains soil health, community nourishment, and ecological balance.

Small farmer George Shenk invites us to understand agriculture and land stewardship as central to human health and collective well-being, emphasizing the reciprocal relationship between food, labor, and the landscapes that sustain them. Feeding families, home care and sustaining communities via volunteership have long been feminized and underpaid. Industrial large scale agriculture often extracts value, however- small, women-run farms often circulate it in regenerative ways.

Through the portrait genre, Joan O'Neal adopts the concept of the animal gaze, positioning farm animals as subjects rather than as resources. By rendering the cow with an attentiveness typically reserved for human portraiture, her works invite viewers to consider empathy, labor, and sacrifice across species. Her series of cow portraits establish visual and ethical parallels between animal bodies and human lives, prompting reflection on shared vulnerability within systems of production.

Vermont has a strong local food identity and environmental sustainability where gender equity are deeply interconnected. Photographer JuanCarlos Gonzalez shares a group of photographs that speak to this conversation. In Vermont, women smallholders play a vital role in shaping food systems, stewarding land, and sustaining rural livelihoods. Viewing sustainability through the lens of women’s farming labor reveals how ecological health, fair work, and community resilience reinforce one another.

In doing so, the exhibition challenges us to reconsider how we value land, labor, and life within contemporary agricultural systems. 
Together, Shenk’s, O’Neal’s and Gonzalez's practices ask viewers to consider care—not only for land and food systems, but for the living beings embedded within them—as a prerequisite for both ecological and social health.

Image above: Joan Brace O'Neal