About the project.

The comic Sheepmowing HEALS: grazing for health, engagement, aesthetics, labor, and sustainability is the result of a collaborative research project conducted between spring 2023 and spring 2024. A part of my thesis research for the MFA in Environmental Art & Social Practice at UC Santa Cruz, I wanted to document and depict the activities of graziers working within the context of environmental crisis in the state of California.

What does contemporary shepherding look like in a time of climate change?

How are graziers recontextualizing ancient practices of transhumance to meet the challenge of wildfire vulnerability?

How can communities imagine shepherding as a technology of the future?

The UC Davis Sheepmowers were an ideal collaborator for the first chapter of this project, situated at a sister institution within the UC system. Beginning with an ethnographic approach, I joined the Sheepmowers during their grazing events in the spring of 2023, conducting interviews and taking reference photographs. After my initial visit, I worked with Haven and all of the interns on designing, writing, storyboarding, and revising the narrative of the minicomic. Through return visits and many emails, we engaged in a reciprocal dialogue, as I gathered feedback and returned with new or adjusted material. A draft of the comic appeared in my MFA exhibition SEARCH PARTY in April 2024, and a print edition of 200 copies was released at the Sheepmowers grazing site on May 15, 2024.

For me, this project was also an important opportunity for developing a very particular method for socially-engaged research focused on the comic form.

How can the production of a comic be used as a tool for collaboration, a site of engagement in itself?

How can I engage a broad audience through the medium of comics, making issues accessible without sacrificing complexity or nuance?

What can visual narrative and sequential art uniquely contribute to agricultural research topics?

For more about the UC Davis Sheepmowers, please visit their website: https://www.sheepmowers.org
And be sure to follow them on Instagram: @ucdavis_sheepmowers