Wooden Harrow or Cultivator c. 1937

Curator: What a curious and quiet piece. I can almost smell the wood and the soil it was meant to churn. It looks like a forgotten friend, rendered with a delicate hand. Editor: Indeed. We're looking at "Wooden Harrow or Cultivator," a watercolor and pencil work by Wilbur M. Rice, dated around 1937. It invites us to consider rural life in a moment of agricultural shift, and perhaps its impact on both people and landscape. Curator: I feel drawn into that life... Imagine the rhythm, the sheer manual effort of using such a thing. It’s both elegant and brutal. The muted palette just intensifies the feeling of earthiness. You can see the ghost of human hands in the worn wood. Editor: Precisely. This image captures the tension between the natural world and human intervention, speaking to the era's evolving relationship to agriculture. What was once sustenance became industry. And did Wilbur Rice intend that commentary? Curator: Maybe, maybe not deliberately. I suspect he was just struck by the innate beauty of a functional object. There's a reverence in the detail. See the way the light catches those aged wooden beams. I doubt you romanticise such an instrument when you break your back using it. But he found the extraordinary in the ordinary! Editor: Absolutely, and placing this artifact within the context of the Depression era offers further avenues for understanding Rice’s choices. Were they celebrating labour, documenting disappearance, critiquing modernity, or even expressing an unacknowledges form of resistance? Curator: Gosh, everything but resistance! But perhaps… Perhaps just slowing down in an era that demanded progress was, in its own way, a quiet act of defiance. Like this humble machine—solid, unpretentious, rooted to the earth. Editor: It encourages us to consider what is left behind as technology races forward. I will leave it there. Curator: Perfect! I shall be quiet now and contemplate broken earth and stubborn machines...