In 2022 I began Plot 46, an art-research project designed to study regenerative agriculture at the Maple Hill Urban Farm in Ottawa. I wanted to test its principles and make some art that would enable me to share my findings. Regenerative agriculture is an evolving set of practices that eschews chemicals and tilling while prescribing the use of cover crops and compost to nurture a strong soil food web, which in turn, supports the production of healthy, sustainable food. I have been documenting my regenerative agricultural art-research in a number of posts on this website (artthatmakesadifference.ca), which first focused on animal advocacy in industrialized animal agriculture but has now been expanded to include food sustainability and agricultural ecology.
During my first year on the farm, I focused on human perspectives of the agricultural landscape. In the second growing season (2023), I shifted my attention to life within my plot lines, and developed materials for Beans, Beetles and the Soil Biome, an artist book of prints and poetry (to be finalized in summer 2025). In growing season three (2024), I took my research below the ground to focus on life within the soil. I produced a video poem entitled, The Unterwelt (Underworld) of Plot 46. Over the winter I planned to produce a large installation piece that would expand on the video.
The soil food web is a complex community of soil organisms that interact with each other and their environment breaking down matter, transferring energy, and cycling nutrients. The organisms can vary with location but almost always include bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and larger creatures like earthworms and insects. Figure 1 shows the taxonomic view of the generic soil food web I have pieced together.

Figure 1: Taxonomic View of the Soil Food Web
Thanks to my Studio Terrarium, I was fascinated to be able to watch the soil food web in action over the fall and winter months. I spotted nematodes, centipedes, tiny translucent snails, mites, worms, traces of fungal mycelium, and much more with just my iPhone camera. Since the soil in the terrarium came from my plot, it allowed me to better understand the organisms that comprise the soil community at the farm. See my earlier post on the Soil Shroud for further description of the Studio Terrarium.

Figure 2: Montage of Members of the Soil Community in my Studio Terrarium
At my studio I began work on my envisioned 9 x 9 foot x 2 foot 3D installation piece that would incorporate large prints, lights, video and a soundtrack. Wow! I must have been deluding myself that I was Steven Spielberg working on a big budget blockbuster. After a month or two developing large collagraph plates, I managed a couple of prints from each. Then disaster struck. I jammed the press, damaged my plates, and got ink on the press blankets. I realized my envisioned print piece was beyond me. I had gotten carried away and needed to rethink my approach to the project. Think small, I said, like the organisms in the soil.
In the fall of 2024, I enrolled in ecoartspace (eas)’s Sustain(ability) & the Art Studio course. With this encouragement, I pivoted and turned my failed prints into a different artwork. I decided to cut some of the prints into strips and weave them into a figurative soil food web. Prototyping, weaving, learning about and depicting soil organisms took a number of months. The following 15 minute video segment (20:45 to 35:27) describes my process as presented to my course mates and the eas audience on January 11, 2025.

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/8OLzuPzRqHo?si=jo7IcqELdueH6Z-k&t=1245
Having decided to create a simulacrum of a Natural History Tableau (see note below), I worked on finishing the piece by adding paper roots, critter prints, leaves and other organic matter, and various embellishments to create an imagined microbial and macro-bial soil community. Figure 3 shows the trace monotype prints I made using critters seen in the Studio Terrarium as models. The individual images were cut out and collaged onto the woven surface.

Figure 3: Trace monotypes of various organisms observed in the terrarium
Finally, I pasted the work onto foam core backing and when it was dry, mounted it into a shadow box frame. With great satisfaction, I finished the Umwelten of the Soil Food Web Tableau in late February (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Unwelten of the Soil Food Web Tableau
Beth Shepherd, Umwelten of the Soil Food Web (2025)
Dimensions (framed): 24 X 36 X 2 inches
Medium: Print-based assemblage of printed kozo papers, Akua intaglio ink, clay pastel, organic materials, acorn-iron ink, wheat paste. Print techniques used: collagraph, drypoint, trace monotype
Note on Sustain(abiity) & the Studio: “Sustain(abiity) & the Studio,” is three-month online course led by @Anna Chapman in collaboration with ecoartspace and the Center for Art Education and Sustainability. I had the privilege of working with an amazing group of eco artists, learning about sustainability practices, and sharing progress on our respective projects. For more information, see https://ecoartspace.org/Blog/13457812.
I am grateful to be part of a growing community of eco artists, who are moving towards more sustainable and often ephemeral forms of art which defies the traditional investment value of art. Instead, many like me conduct art-research projects in collaboration with the human and more-than-human partners to share knowledge with the community.
Note on Umwelt (pl. Umwelten): I have long been fascinated by the work of Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), a German biologist. Uexküll used the term Umwelt to describe the subjective world that an organism perceives through its senses. Each organism has its own functional space related to its lifestyle and bounded by its perceptual cues. Different organisms (including humans) experience the same environment differently. Each has its own worldview. (Jakob von Uexküll et al. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning. 1st University of Minnesota Press ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Print.)
Note on the Natural History Tableau: Wanting to link my contemporary art projects with art history, I like to make relevant connections with the past. In the long 18th Century, the tableau played an important role in conveying scientific knowledge by integrating real elements with artistic touches to entice, entertain and educate audiences. Unlike paintings and drawing, real specimens were arranged in three-dimensional naturalistic settings to blur the difference between living and dead organisms. Like the naturalists of the past, eco artists use our work to entice, entertain, and educate audiences on subjects important to us all. (Valérie Kobi, “Staging Life: Natural History Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” Journal18, Issue 3 Lifelike (Spring2017), https://www.journal18.org/1306.)