Eye of the Beholder: The Beauty Beneath.

Since ancient times, soils have been appreciated for their useful properties: as a source for building materials or providing their substrates, as the medium for growing food and fiber crops or forests, as wildlife habitat, and the reservoir and purifier of water. Soils have a long history of directly providing the materials for making art, too; such as pigments for paints, minerals for glazes, and clays for pottery. The landscapes they underlay have been appreciated for their aesthetic properties, but we will posit whether the soil itself, in profile, can be considered an object of beauty.

   We will examine soils from the viewpoint of its being paradoxically both the most ancient of art forms and also the most contemporary of art forms, a sculpture which may best be appreciated in two dimensions and may be described not only using Soil Taxonomy but with the taxonomy with which all art is described as well; such terms as line, shape, form, space, color, value, and texture. We will pose the question of whether a naturally occurring soil is any less of a work of art than a piece created intentionally with these elements in mind.  We'll take a look at some of the soil inspired art being produced today as well; not just soil used as a medium, but soil as subject matter. We will become acquainted with just who is looking at soil in these ways. The aspiration is to make it possible, in this International Year of Soil, to bring a further appreciation of this most humble and yet most noble of materials to a wider audience.