FRUits of our labor

Fruits of Our Labor isn't just a product or a service, but a lifestyle. Therefore, like life, the business is constantly changing and growing through natural phases. Fruits of Our Labor was built on empowering women and leaning into the divine feminine. Just like the earth, women go through seasons and cycles. We believe it is crucial for women's health to follow the natural rhythms of the seasons and months with both farm to table eating, as well as how we work and rest our bodies.

Our business works in phases, and we are on the precipice of Phase One. The paintings and prints created and sold by our founder, Madeline Halsey, are tools for us to gather an audience of women and people with uterus's to advocate for reproductive and LGBT rights. We see these prints in college dorm rooms, planned parenthood waiting rooms, in 20 somethings starter apartments, and taking to the streets in protests.

This is only Phase One, the growth potential is exciting, and we hope to harness this social advocacy into opportunities to educate women and queer communities how to live more sustainably and in tune with their inner infradian rhythm.

Phase Two will open doors to a shared space of trails and gardens. Phase Three brings the expansion of our food program with community gatherings and events, with unique dining experiences on the property. Phase Four introduces workshops in weaving, natural dyes, and fine arts as well as classes in the culinary arts. Phase Five is our final stage creating spaces for our guests to stay for extended periods in tiny homes on the property, with opportunities for W.O.O.F.ing and hosting wedding parties.

The core value of Fruits of Our Labor is to experience all that the land around us can offer, and how to nourish our mind, body, and soul throughout the seasons of the year, and the stages of life.

Even though Fruits of Our Labor became an official business in 2023, the original concept has been in the works since 2018. Our Founder, Madeline Halsey, centered her college thesis around the over sexualization of the female form by creating paintings and wearable textiles with an aesthetic nodding to her favorite artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. She challenged the viewers to question their own initial assumptions. Did they see her paintings as cut in half fruit, or did the viewer find themselves instantly sexualizing the piece and only seeing a vulva?

concept write up : May 2018

Part One: Justice for Georgia

In the year 1908 Georgia O’Keeffe dropped out of art school and gave up on her dreams of becoming an artist. Women’s rights were slim and female artists were still unacknowledged. Becoming a successful artist was nearly impossible, even for a man. For centuries art was only expressed realistically and in a way that was mimicked from the masters, who were all male. It was already hard enough for a woman to become an artist, especially when it was a woman who had her own unique style.

A 2016 exhibition at London's Tate Modern challenges the widely accepted assumption that Georgia O'Keeffe's famous flower paintings are depictions of female genitalia. A heroine of American 20th century modernism, O'Keeffe is best known for her large scale studies of flowers, painted as if looking at them through a magnifying glass. However, since the early 1920s the Freudian theory that her flower paintings were actually close studies of the vulva has been assumed. This theory was first put forward by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer who first promoted her work and later became her husband. Despite O'Keeffe's six decades of vigorous denial that her paintings were in any way sexual, it still remains a commonly held assumption today. 

Part Two: The Over Sexualization of the Female Body

The sexualization of the female body is nothing new to modern society. From art, to advertisements, to comments walking down the street, women's bodies are a playground to be judged. The fruits of my labor have caused me to feel uncomfortable, confused, pain, and self hate. Along with my fellow sisters, we all have our stories, some so ridiculous they are laughable, but many that are too difficult to even admit to ourselves. The state of our society has become unacceptable. We could continue to remain silent, smile when told to, and shrug it off, but that is equally inexcusable. This collection is for taking our bodies back and defying self hate that is so easy to fall into as a young woman. Appreciating the female form is completely different than sexualizing it. When you live in a society where you see women as purely sexual objects, you confuse them as not an actual person, but as just a body. We are all works of art, no matter our stories. 

Part Three: A Vision in Textiles

I took a modern approach of Georgia O'Keeffe's legendary work by creating studies of cut in half fruits, a blood orange, a strawberry, and a peach. These studies are meant to challenge the viewer to look past sexual assumptions and to see misunderstood beauty and to celebrate the female form. 

My process is from a fine artist's perspective, rather than from a traditional print design approach. When creating prints, instead of creating motifs and organizing them into a repeat, I wanted to create an initial art piece to derive abstract patterns from. 

I chose to ignore traditional painting  techniques created by the male masters, such as sketching out the image before hand and making an underpainting. Instead, I free hand painted, focusing on colors and textures first. I wanted these fruits to encompass my own personal style and to mimic how O'Keeffe embraced her own painting techniques. To enhance texture I used thick layers of acrylic, transparent tempura, saturated dyes, and chalk pastels, and created shapes of color through various types of mark making. These  techniques to create detail represent the many complex layers of the female mind, body, and soul and my own personal story. 

By photographing upclose detail shots of the paintings, abstract prints are made and the initial image is lost leaving room for interpretation. Each painting has 3 abstract coordinate prints and 1 jacquard woven to accompany it in the final collection, creating a final show of 3 (4'x4') paintings, 6 abstract prints, and 3 jacquard wovens.