Tina Gutierrez, 2024. “Madonna of the Garden.” Jordyn Flowe and Obadiah with Early Girl Tomato at Melrose Garden, Cincinnati.
Culture Crops: Ohio’s Hidden Gardens and Secret Food Histories
This America 250-Ohio funded project features Cincinnati-based fine arts photographer Tina Gutierrez's work - portraits that serve as a celebration of Ohio’s history and diversity of food growing communities. Culture Crops includes stories of Indigenous, immigrant, and local community and family farmers, and the history of the food they produce.
Culture Crops is an exploration of the universal connections between people and their food. The project and resulting exhibition features work by Cincinnati-based fine arts photographer Tina Gutierrez as a series of powerful photographic portraits that serve as a celebration of Ohio’s food growing communities, personal stories, and unique history.
Culture Crops includes stories of Indigenous, immigrant, and local community and family farmers, and the history of the food they produce. The resulting series of photographic portraits and video interviews by Cincinnati artist and filmmaker Asa Featherstone, IV share the stories of these present-day Ohioans, their experiences of growing, and the history of their foraging, gardening, and farming traditions. Local food movement chronologist Professor Alan Wight (University of Cincinnati) has worked closely with the project team and RCCAM staff to develop written content for the exhibition to provide cultural and historical context for the crops and culture represented.
Among the 31 featured portraits, three are highlighted here:
“Madonna of the Garden” Jordyn Flowe and Obadiah at Melrose Garden, Cincinnati, Ohio 2024. Featuring one of the Early Girl tomatoes they grew in Melrose Gardens, Cincinnati. Jordyn describes herself as Sicilian-Italian and Black. She loves making tomato sauce for pasta and pizza, as well as growing basil, which is something she connects with her Italian heritage. Jordyn has great appreciation of community gardens: being outside, seeing the transformation from the seed to plant to plate, all the while meeting new people.
Tina Gutierrez, 2025. Cordell Cordrey and pig at Summe Farm, Butler County.
Cordell Cordrey of Summe Farm, Butler County, pictured with one of the family’s crossbred pigs. This particular pig is a sow, a mother to a number of show pigs presented by the Cordrey family. Pigs have long been reared in Ohio. Hogs were driven on foot from as far as Toledo to Cincinnati, prior to the advent of rail transportation. Pork production was a highly important aspect of Cincinnati’s economy, leading to the name “Porkopolis.” Byproducts of pork led to the growth of Procter & Gamble in the 19th century, and the foundations of the assembly line.
Tina Gutierrez, 2025. Kristina and Adeline Fox, George Ironstrack, and Kara Strass of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma among Black Maples in Oxford, holding buckets used to gather sap from surrounding maple trees.
Members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma in Oxford, Ohio, with buckets used to gather sap from surrounding maple trees called ahsenaamišahki in the Myaamia language, as part of an annual maple sugaring taking place between January and March each year. This is called eehsenaamišipoohkiiyankwi in the Myaamia language, meaning “we harvest maple sap.” Pictured are Kristina and Adeline Fox, George Ironstrack, and Kara Strass of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Kristina, George and Kara are staff of the Myaamia Center at Miami University.
Related programs include a panel discussion with Culture Crops creative team members Gutierrez, Featherstone, and Wight on Saturday, Feb. 21, and a community-focused program of related short presentations, gallery talks, art activities, and a cooking demonstration on Saturday, April 25, in celebration of Earth Day. In partnership with the Oxford Community Arts Center (OCAC), a community photography project is in development with a call for photographs of locally sourced, grown, or cooked food for a photo mural at RCCAM and a special exhibition at the OCAC in May 2026. There will also be gardening classes and other celebrations of locally grown and sourced foods for all ages in partnership with OCAC. With the support of students in Miami University’s Art Education program, led by Professor Stephanie Danker, inspired by the photographs of Gutierrez, lesson plans are in development that can be used in a range of educational settings.
This project raises awareness of the importance of local food production and the many people and communities who grow food in Southwest Ohio and beyond. We encourage community members to grow their own food, from the smallest window box to a kitchen and backyard or community garden. We plan to do this through encouraging learning about food history, including where food comes from, what came to our region and when, what was created here, and how that food history is rooted in our everyday culinary and communal practices.
The Culture Crops Project is funded in part through an America 250 Buckeye Grant from the Ohio 250 Commission, with additional support from the Greater Oxford Community Foundation for related programming, and is supported by RCCAM at Miami University, among other sponsors. The exhibition is available for venues in Ohio and beyond, with its first traveling venue at Northern Kentucky University Galleries in October 2026 as part of the FotoFocus Biennial.
For a preview of Culture Crops, see this webinar hosted by Miami University Alumni Association. For further information about this exhibition, press kit, and related programs, please email your request to artmuseum@MiamiOH.edu.
Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum
801 South Patterson Avenue
Oxford, OH 45056
Galleries Open Jan. 27 - June 13, 2026 Tue-Fri 10 am-5 pm; Sat 12-5 pm; Second Wednesday of the month 10 am-7:30 pm
