The Soul of Humus’

 Third and fourth Pasture Rotations: 

Fumes to Plumes

As in agriculture that rejuvenates the soil, the bison has rotated through its third pasture/exhibition to its fourth in 2023. It began in a historic grain silo/art venue in Sculpture Month Houston's Altamira, which considered modern caveman's materials and message to the future, followed by the Blue Norther exhibit, where the bison addressed extreme weather's connection to soil. Then it carried its message to the Houston Forever exhibition in the former Texaco Building in downtown Houston.

THIRD ROTATION : TEXACO STAR

The Star building is the former home of Texaco—the company that developed the Spindletop gusher in 1901 and took the US into the oil age—and is a key location in the sculpture's rotation. The bison in the Star embodied our civilization's conflict "between" ecology and commerce. Before Spindletop, oil was primarily used for lighting and as a lubricant. With Spindletop's abundance, Texaco began marketing petroleum for mass consumption.

What can we learn about natural carbon cycling through the soil from the herd's eating and waste habits—also called consumption and regeneration—when we contrast them with the development of the energy industry and our society's mass consumption without regeneration? Comparing and contrasting these two energy sources, both receive energy from the earth: the bison returns carbon to the soil, but, in contrast, humans supply a chain of abundant energy but haven’t solved how to repay this carbon debt for future generations. Integrating natural systems of regeneration can steer our innovation and creative minds to a future in which consumption, conservation, and regeneration of earth's resources are in balance.

 FOURTH ROTATION: FOREVER 21

However, the overconsumption habits of humans impacting wildlife diversity did not begin with petroleum. That relationship between human consumption and wildlife extinction is adorned by fashion and drills deeper than the carbon debt. The Washington Post article, Looks That Kill: The Fashion of Extinction, chronicles man’s battle to save birds from the millinery industry as far back as the late 1880s.

February of 2023, the bison opens in the Southern Glory Exhibition in the vacated Forever 21 retail space. Forever 21 has a reputation as a good example of fast fashion. Fundamental to Forever 21 and the fast fashion business model is generating profits by seasonal mass consumption. In this space, we see that the bison’s seasonal migration, eating and waste habits not only store carbon but build wildlife habitats, and provide moisture and sustenance that makes life possible and supports a diversity of species. In the UN report, “The fashion industry produces between 2 to 8 percent of global carbon emissions. Textile dyeing is also the second largest polluter of water globally, and it takes around 2,000 gallons of water to make a typical pair of jeans. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. If nothing changes, by 2050, the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. Textiles are also estimated to account for approximately 9% of annual microplastic losses to the ocean.”

We have made great strides since the “Looks that Kill” dominated fashion. I have witnessed with my own eyes at Roam Ranch that the flocks of birds return with the herds, build nests of the fur and drink from rainwater in their wallows. As this exhibition opens, I work through the solutions that we all can implement in our daily lives to support wildlife, from where we choose to spend our money, mending and restyling our garments to relandscaping our yards and building eco-tourism. And maybe even rebuilding our sculptures to tell more stories.

Endangered Knowledge: The Soul of Humus

Global warming, food security, drought/flooding, wildlife habitats, economic instability, and health – these problems are not new to humankind. The archeology of ancient civilizations has recorded connections between the longevity of civilizations and the health of their soil. The United Nations reported in 2014 that the world's topsoil would only last 60 more growing seasons. Soil scientists around the globe agree that solutions to these issues are rooted in our treatment of soil—the skin that covers our planet.

For Altimira’s Sculpture Month, I installed a site-specific sculpture of a bison, made from a welded steel armature, a work of land art covered in topsoil and native grasses. This is part of a comprehensive installation that I am currently developing, which considers the role of the American bison within Houston's specific soil ecological history. The work is titled Endangered Knowledge: The Soul of Humus.

I am inspired by the words of M. Thomashow, who writes, "Record natural history to the collective memory so that it is no longer endangered knowledge." For several years, I have been researching grass-fed food production, attending soil conferences, and visiting regenerative ranches. Research in these fields show how to fight desertification and reverse climate change through regenerative agriculture practices. Interestingly, this natural history of living soil, how it evolved in the Houston Coastal Prairie, its essential part within microbial communities in human health, and clay’s ability to stabilize carbon is not common knowledge.  

In the hide of a sculpture, is the narrative of soil health. My sculpture records this endangered natural history through the dense coat of the powerful humus-built bison, dripping in the armor of locally sourced native grasses and sedges, seeds, and pods. The male bison is supported by a welded steel armature, covered in a stainless-steel lath. The bison's skin, made from these grasses, are attached to the lath with a Houston clay fill. The 112” long bison is exhibited in the center of a large grain silo a relic of industrial agriculture. The bison in an actively grazing stance, head down in plow position, his hump rising robust and bushy out of his heavy forequarters to 74”' tall.  

Ecological History

Historically B. bison functioned as the first farm equipment. The grass seeds clinging to their burly coats were carried across the plains as they migrated north to south and back between seasons, like tractors up and down fields. Herds of tractors not green, but a rich brown harvested the plains with their appetites, each bite stimulating new root growth. The old roots withered into cavities that served as dwellings for a variety of keystone species and became underground cisterns collecting floodwaters for drier seasons. Their coats dropped kernels and cuttings as the winds ruffled their beards and chaps, and when they took dirt baths in buffalo wallows dug with their horns. Massive roaming compostors, a single bison cow daily dumping 40 lbs. of fresh manure onto these seeds and drilling them into the earth with their spade-like hooves, sprinkling them with the perfect prescription of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium-rich urine and then moving in a predator safe tight herd on to the next buffet. With time the newly sowed fields sprouted new growth of blades, stems, and leaves of countless shapes, sizes, and heights. This diversity of leaves fit like puzzle pieces into dense living solar blankets, harnessing carbon from the air and returning it as sugars to feed the dynamic root microbiomes below the earth’s skin. The complicated relationship between the soil microbiome and the human intestinal microbiome is one of the most dynamic topics in biomedical research.  Flocks of birds mutualistically living off the pests harbored on the bison followed the herds, drinking from and bathing in rainwaters that collected in the bison wallows, building their nests from clumps of bison fur. Recent studies show the fur provides a health benefit to unborn chicks. Bird and butterfly habitats were abundant when the bison roamed.

Message to the Future

The armor that protects the epidermis in the Gulf Coast prairie is grass. The animal whose population peaked at 30 million, is B. Bison. Combine native grasses with ruminants and the grasslands decompose into rich organic matter; for every 1% increase per acre of biological organic material, the soil can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water. Restoring native prairie vegetation decreases water runoff and flooding, increasing soil absorption of water and slowing floodwaters on land. With extreme building practices and concrete hardscaping, reimagining the landscape of Houston's 600 square miles of real estate can make a significant impact on the region’s flooding. The prairie grasses' roots can extend from eight to fourteen feet deep: these roots sequester carbon like an upside-down rainforest. Changing our agricultural practices is an important step towards turning global warming right side up. Telling the dynamic story about these relationships between the grazing herds, the living soil, and finding ways to reimagine urban landscapes and agricultural practices in holistic and regenerative ways are the center of my current research and sculptural practice.

The impact of the bison on sustaining topsoil—and, therefore, life—need not be Endangered Knowledge. The role bison play within the prairie ecosystem—their ability to increase photosynthesis, reduce competition for water, and regenerate depleted, unsalvageable, lifeless prairies back to productive and bountiful, nutrient-producing land and wildlife habitats—needs to be carved into our modern systems. Recording this Endangered Knowledge into the consciousness of humankind will stimulate grassroots efforts and stop the cultivation of soil depletion and return the natural process to the treatment of the skin of our planet. A Parietal artist in 2020, I will use grass to record the Soul of Humus so that it will no longer be Endangered Knowledge.

Footnote-

Bison vs Buffalo which name is correct? The common name Buffalo has been widely used, since early settlers were naming them as their European and Asian counterparts. The correct name of the last American surviving bison is B. Bison. The correct name of the last American surviving bison is B. Bison.

Further Reading and information –

- Can Livestock Grazing Stop Desertification? - Scientific American

- Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, by David R. Montgomery

- Soil Biology and Land Management

- Bison Eating Habits

- Wildlife that Depend on Bison

- History of Bison in Texas

- Building Soil through multi species quorum with Christine Jones.

- Ling Soil Film

- Allan Savory on how to fight desertification and reverse climate change

- Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? - Yale E360

- A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas,– D. Worrall, coming fall 2021

-Whales built the food web and ecosystem of the oceans as the bison built the food web and ecosystem of the land.

The sculpture is installed in two silos. The second silo pictured above

The second silo shows the animal impact. This installation is made from the fill dirt, and the organic material that turns it into living soil, dry stomped on native plants, and bison dung cast bronze.