MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
January 6, 2025
This month we recognize Leslie Labowitz Starus and her decades-long practice exploring the intersections of ecofeminism, art, and community engagement through her 40+ years project Sproutime, integrating personal history, ecological sustainability, and feminist activism.
"Labowitz Starus'art/life practice and eco-feminist project SPROUTIME (1980 -2024) has spanned four decades. Integrating personal and global survival into performances and installations, she started Sproutime by growing organic sprouts and greens, creating a micro-urban farm in her yard in Venice, California. This was followed by a series of ecologically motivated performances and installations produced in galleries across the United States. As an outgrowth of these art installations, she started her business enterprise (also called Sproutime) in 1980, growing and distributing organic food throughout the US until 2011, and maintains her sprout stand in the Santa Monica Farmers Market as her ongoing legacy. The nurturing and healing aspects of SPROUTIME counteract Labowitz Starus’s experience growing up with intergenerational trauma as a child of a holocaust survivor."
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Farmers Market, 1980
"Perhaps one of the more durational and robust works in Sproutime, Labowitz opened a stall at the Farmers Market in Santa Monica, an art/life performance that has been ongoing for 40 years. As an urban farmer at the beginning of the organic movement in the US, farmers markets were the only vehicle to sell the products of urban and small farmers in California. The Market was a meeting place for restaurants, produce distributors, and retail markets, all of whom then became Sproutime customers. Labowitz was one of a few women farmers and continues to appear each week, where she sells sprouts, products, and holds wheatgrass toasts. Many artists worked at the Sproutime stand over the years, including artists Dark Bob and Heidi Zin. It was the best “gig” in town."above
The Secret Garden, 1981
"This performance in Labowitz’s backyard in Venice, California, introduced the Sproutime business as a metaphor for her own healing after burnout from past public performance work on violence against women. Reading aloud a passage from the children’s book “The Secret Garden” spoke to the darkness of the soul that can be transformed in a garden; she related it to her own childhood in a family of European Holocaust survivors. The audience walked through a dark garage where Labowitz grew her sprouts and then entered the light of the garden where they were served sprout salads. Sprouts are the voice of life in a world intent on its own destruction."above
Roots, 1994
"At 18th St Arts Center, Santa Monica Leslie installed a work made up of “root mats” from sprouted greens already cut and sold. After greens are cut, the plant matter in the trays is used for compost at the growing site. In the gallery she exposed the root growth and built a sculptural form by stacking the mats on top of each other. Workers from the greenhouse brought more root mats each week. As the stack started to decompose, heat and smoke rose out of the decaying plant material. Stacks collapsed on themselves. At the end of the exhibition, the broken-down soil was taken back to finish composting."above
Sproutime is Now, 2023
"Her 20' long installation was a call out to join a movement that cherishes the earth and all life. Labowitz’s intention was to create a bridge for the students at Cal Arts between art, activism and public life. This was the largest of her installs with “root mats” from cut trays of greens. The signs took the form of yard signs and were placed among the root mats. The installation was a meditation on life and the dying process. For over two weeks, the plant material broke down, began to smell, and attracted flies and insects. At the end of the exhibition, the decomposing plant material was picked up by Metabolic Studio to add to their compost pile. Leslie was also a co-producer of the Eco-Expo team of the Earth Edition project at Cal Arts."below
Women Reclaim The Earth, 2024
Small, sunny fields of wheatgrass sprouting from growing trays alongside hand-held protest signs were included as part of the exhibition “Life on Earth: Art & Ecofeminism,” featured at The Brick in East Hollywood, California. The repurposed anti-war protest signs, handwritten by the artist, allude to a “Peace Economy,” or “movement towards peaceable policies and actions, to become aware of the environmental effects of war on our food supply and health." The buckets, seeds, trays, and wheatgrass are the actual materials the artist uses to grow organic sprouts and greens. She also led a kids superfoods workshop during Life on Earth, part of Getty'sPST ART—ART & SCIENCE COLLIDE. below
Leslie Labowitz Starus, born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, in 1946, relocated to California with her family and has resided in Los Angeles since 1958. She did her first early feminist performances while attending Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and received her MFA in 1972. After graduating, that same year Labowitz Starus was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to Germany to attend the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where Joseph Beuys was a mentor. At this time, Labowitz Starus also co-founded a women’s video group with artist Ulrike Rosenbach. When she lived in Europe, she also taught performance at Bonn University 1973-75 and art at the University of Maryland campuses in Rota, Spain 1975-76 and Nuremberg, Germany 1976-77. When Labowitz returned to the United States in 1977, she started her collaborations with Suzanne Lacy. During this time, they collaborated on Three Weeks in May (1977) and other public events on violence against women, including In Mourning and In Rage (1977), an internationally known performance during the serial rape and murders of 11 women in Los Angeles by Hillside Strangler. Labowitz Starus and Lacy then formed Ariadne: A Social Art Network (1977-1982), an umbrella for public performances on violence against women that included people in media, politics, and the art community who participated in these large-scale events. Today, she continues to mine her artistic and family archives, integrating the personal and the political in her ongoing environmental social practice. https://leslielabowitz.com www.againstviolence.art
Featured images (top to bottom): ©Leslie Labowitz Starus, Women Reclaim The Earth, 1979, poster; Farmers Market, 1980-ongoing, Santa Monica, California; The Secret Garden, 1981, backyard performance, Venice, California, photo by Suzanne Lacy; Roots - 1994, installation, 18th St Arts Center, Santa Monica, California; Sproutime Is Now, 2023, installation, Cal Arts, Visions2030, Earth Edition; Women Reclaim The Earth , 1979/2024, installation including photo montage on canvas, 66 x 48 inches, at The Brick, Los Angeles; portrait of the artist (below).
