Jan Lang looks at soil with a totally unique perspective--in fact, she paints with it. Recently some of her “soil paintings” made their public debut.

Lang, a physical science technician with the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s National Soil Survey Lab in Lincoln, Neb., said that, “Here in the Lab I’ve always noticed the many beautiful colors of the soils, that come from all over the country and from around the world as well, that we analyze as part of our mission.”

Last year NRCS put out a call for creative ideas for an agency display to help commemorate the bicentennial of the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who had journeyed forth to explore lands, west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, from 1803 to 1806.

“When I heard about that,” Lang recounted, “it occurred to me that we could use soil to create paintings to depict the Lewis and Clark experience. And, as a bonus, it would be a great way to celebrate America’s natural resources--especially our landscapes and soils, in the context of the Lewis and Clark expedition.”

Accordingly, Lang--who observed that she hadn’t done any painting in 25 years--used soil samples from the Lab to develop her unique art form. “We take some of the soil samples,” she explained, “and put them through a very fine mesh to make a ‘soil powder.’ I then mix the soil powder with water and a clear acrylic paint--which is a glue-like substance that adheres the soil to the paper. What I’ve then created is ‘soil paints’.”

“The trick with painting landscapes is that it’s normally hard to get the color right,” she pointed out. “But when I paint with soil, the color comes from nature--and it’s exactly right.”

Using these ‘soil paints’--which come in virtually all colors except blue and whose thickness varies depending on the amount of water added to the mix--she employed such tools as artist paintbrushes, sticks, sponges, spatulas, and pins on watercolor paper to depict scenes from the Lewis and Clark Trail. Such scenes included an American Indian showing Lewis and Clark how to burn the prairie to encourage new plant growth in the spring and entice the buffalo to return to Indian hunting grounds, and Clark’s slave, York, as he hunted buffalo.

Lang said she took her inspiration from photos she had seen and from descriptions of soils and landscapes that NRCS soil scientists had discovered in the Lewis and Clark journals. NRCS public affairs specialist Suzanne Pender pointed out that Lewis and Clark had specific instructions from President Thomas Jefferson to report on factors of the land that would show its potential for agricultural uses.

“President Jefferson wanted the explorers to describe ‘…the soil & face of the country, its growth and vegetable productions, especially those not of the United States…’,” Pender said.

The Lewis and Clark commemoration kicked off in mid-January at Monticello--Jefferson’s historic home--in Charlottesville, Va. As part of that commemoration both NRCS and the Forest Service unveiled exhibits, on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. The January-March 2003 issue of the USDA News carried a story on USDA’s role in the commemoration, including those two exhibits.

Fourteen of Lang’s soil paintings were on display as part of NRCS’s exhibit. She helped to staff that exhibit.

“My experience there,” she affirmed, “reminded me that people are absolutely amazed at the variety of colors that soils come in, here in this country.” •

--Joanna Pope