The Orchard Keepers

Works by Erin Currier | Acrylic and mixed media on panel

The Orchard Keepers, the title of which is borrowed from the first novel of Santa Fe’s own Cormac McCarthy, is a new body of work that draws its point of reference from the fabled peach orchard of Canyon de Chelly—an orchard of some three thousand centuries-old peach trees that had long been the pride of the Navajo Dine’.  In 1864, Kit Carson and his men laid waste to that orchard.  The US Government , as represented by Carson, was not the first to be threatened by a garden: in 17th century England, for example, “sowing the ground with parsnips, carrots, and beans” was an act of subversion, punishable by law.  Despite efforts by the powerful to demolish “unauthorized” crops, guerilla gardening continues to this day—as do the rich and longstanding ecological, cultural, and spiritual traditions of the Dine’, as evidenced, for example, in the annual Miss Navajo Nation event.  These traditions could not be obliterated centuries ago, nor today— due to lineage holders, “orchard keepers”, who preserve them.

   The Orchard Keepers celebrates sentinels of traditions and values outside of the industrialized status quo: a martial arts master from China, Indian gurus, a Mexican mystic and healer, among others. It is about crops for food and crops for healing. The new series also portrays those quite literally engaged in tending and keeping orchards and crops: a coalition of migrant tomato workers in Florida, for example.  

   The unifying thread that runs through all of the portraits in The Orchard Keepers series is the tendency of the subjects to regard the spiritual realm and the natural world as fully integrated, and as part of a sacred lineage worth upholding.