The Corn Story

Inspired by the golden palette and rural honesty of Alfred Montgomery, this project follows corn from field to table, moving through harvest, preservation, and plate with the unhurried pace of a painting.

It opens in the barn. A woman in linen and a head wrap sits barefoot on a burlap sack, shucking corn by hand, husks piling around her feet, sunflowers behind her. The light falls like it always has in paintings of this kind: warm, side-lit, without sentimentality. Close-up, her hands work quietly. The corn itself fills the frame, golden and unadorned.

Then the drying. Ears of corn hang from a weathered wooden ladder, tied by their husks, row after row. A burlap sack sits below. The same corn appears close up, dried and darkened, its kernels irregular and beautiful.

At the table, a corn chowder arrives in a ceramic bowl, thick and golden, topped with crispy bacon and fresh thyme, a slice of sourdough resting alongside it on a wooden board. Beside it, The Nebraskan, a cocktail made with BLN Vodka, garnished with a charred corn husk and a sprig of thyme, served over ice in an embossed glass on a worn wooden surface.

From harvest to glass, from field to bowl. The whole arc of a single ingredient, painted in amber light.