Leslie Labowitz-Starus has been exploring the intersections of ecofeminism, art, and community engagement through her ongoing project, Sproutime - integrating the personal history, ecological sustainability, and feminist activism.
Learn more about Leslie.
SPROUTIME
An ongoing art/life/eco-feminist project spanning 40+ years.
Women Reclaim the Earth poster, 1979.
Eco-Feminism & Activism
Making the personal political in new contexts
Early feminist performances and peace activism transition into an environmental practice
Feminist self reliance in building both an artistic practice and a food business
Pedogogical purpose in teaching about nutrition, food justice and changing the way people eat
An Urban Farm:
Healthy & Healing
1980s
Farmers Market
1980
Perhaps one of the more durational and robust works in Sproutime, Labowitz opened a stall at the Farmers Market in Santa Monica, an art/life performance that has been ongoing for 40 years. As an urban farmer at the beginning of the organic movement in the US, farmers markets were the only vehicle to sell the products of urban and small farmers in California. The Market was a meeting place for restaurants, produce distributors and retail markets, all of whom then became Sproutime customers. Labowitz was one of a few women farmers and continues to appear each week where she sales sprouts, products, and holds wheatgrass toasts. Many artists worked at the Sproutime stand over the years including artists Dark Bob and Heidi Zin. It was the best “gig” in town.
The Secret Garden
1981
This performance in Labowitz’s backyard in Venice, California, introduced the Sproutime business as a metaphor for her own healing after burnout from past public performance work on violence against women. Reading aloud a passage from the children’s book “The Secret Garden” spoke to the darkness of the soul that can be transformed in a garden, she related it to her own childhood in a family of European Holocaust survivors. The audience walked through a dark garage where Labowitz grew her sprouts and then entered the light of the garden where they were served sprout salads. Sprouts are the voice of life in a world intent on it’s own destruction.
Secret Garden,1980, backyard performance in Venice. Photo credit Suzanne Lacy.
SPROUTIME
SPROUTIME
Sproutime has Arrived and is for Sale
1981
This performance & installation at Franklin Furnace in Manhattan consisted of an ad campaign in the Village Voice announcing an opportunity for an artist to start their own entrepreneurial venture. Leslie created an indoor hanging sprout garden, verdant green that grew over three weeks as she researched natural food industry in New York and offered the business model as a practical solution to the real day to day economic struggle of local artists. The project culminated in an Open-bid sale as a performance while Labowitz served up salads and wheat grass juice.
Sproutime has Arrived, performance & installation, Franklin Furnace NYC, part of LA/London, curated by Suzanne Lacy and Susan Hiller, 1981.
Sproutime
San Francisco Demonstraktion
1981
An installation simulating an anti-war demonstration. Banners and hand-painted anti-war protest signs by women filled up the gallery along with growing green on tables, slides projected on wall of demonstrations that took place in Berkeley during the Vietnam War, recording of Dave Dellinger, activist speaking. Audience sat on floor between signs. One side of gallery, Labowitz reconstructed her farmers market stand including tarp, banner, tables, trays of sprouts. After marching outside with sign "War is a Seedy Business," Leslie enters the gallery & takes a position behind the table at the stand. Audience comes up and makes salads while she talks about sprouts.
Demonstraktion, indoor performance/installation and outdoor demonstration, Site Gallery, SF, 1981.
Sproutime
Long Beach:
Old Jewish Cemetery
1983
A reimagined version of the well known monumental cemetery in Prague in the Czech Republic. Taken from Labowitz’s personal history as her family originated there and her parents were married at the Synagogue on the cemetery site. This installation at the Long Beach Museum is a scaled down version of organic materials from her sprout business, delivered each week by Sproutime workers. Signs from anti-war protests by women since 1900 and information on sprouts were mixed in with personal family photos and childhood memories to form a “cemetery” that contrasts a life-destroying action like war with a life-giving one.
Hand-made montage with photographs and color photocopies of Sproutime LB super-imposed over the Prague Jewish Cemetery, 2017.
The Light That Shines Through
1984/1998
In yet another recycling incorporating signs and similar greens from the Old Jewish Cemetery installation, Labowitz created a 2 dimensional artwork on a photo of the cemetery in Prague. This work is dedicated to her mother, her daughter and all women who protested and continue to protest against war. Here the signs replace the gravestones symbolically activating the cemetery, and they are juxtaposed with images of flats of greens and sprouts from the Sproutime business.
It is important to remember that during these early years sprouts were a part of California culture but relatively unknown, although today they have an important place among the “foodie” culture. There was no photoshop, all images were taken from photos and constructed by hand.
Read Leslie's family history behind The Light That Shines Through.
Environment and Art
1983
This Installation at the USC Atelier Gallery in Santa Monica featured hand-painted signs from the Old Jewish Cemetery, arranged and leaning against the wall. Labowitz employs signs from protest movements as a statement that connects organic farming with the political sphere. As with all small farmers, she is conscious of the importance of recycling and renewal and saves signs from one event and repurposes them for another. The signs weather and age over time, a natural process that is embedded in the act of farming.
Sproutime, 1984, USC Atelier Gallery, Santa Monica Place.
Sproutime Venice: Sprout Lessons
1989
Once again in her backyard in Venice, California, Labowitz offered a tour of her sprout growing operation in her garage and offered a lunch with a menu designed by the late artist Jackie Apple. The exploration of Life/Art in Southern California was stewarded by local college professors and artists like Allan Kaprow and was a robust inquiry by the early performance art scene into how art practice intertwined with life practice. Supported by Buddhist thought and a general lifestyle exploration of the region, these works offered models for community artists that wanted to affect social and cultural change.
Building a Sustainable Business as Art
1990s
Greenhouse
1990
Labowitz moved her business from her home growing site to a ¾ acre agriculturally zoned property in Canoga Park, part of LA county. The steady growth of this green business kept pace with the developing urban farming and health food culture in California. Her business practices for employees, providing health care, fair wages, support for green card applications and so on, reflected her feminist concern for social justice expressed in all of this work. Organizing with other farmers, they used and created new natural growing materials and methods. Organic seeds and beans were rare until the late 1990’s. The major battle of the 90’s was fighting GMO’s alongside farmers and the public.
Greenhouse in Canoga Park, 1990.
Roots
1994
At 18th St Arts Center, Santa Monica Leslie installed a work made up of “root mats” from sprouted greens already cut and sold. After greens are cut the plant matter in the trays is used for compost at the growing site. In the gallery she exposed the root growth and built a sculptural form by stacking the mats on top of each other. Workers from the greenhouse brought more root mats each week. As the stack started to decompose, heat and smoke rose out of the decaying plant material. Stacks collapsed on themselves. At the end of the exhibition, the broken-down soil was taken back to the finish composting.
Roots, installation exhibition on Food and Art, curated by Barbara Smith, 18th Street Arts Center Gallery, 1994.
Growing a Green Business
2000s
Becoming Foodology
2000
Sproutime expanded their food line to include prepared foods made from what they grow. Labowitz as a performative action opened a food manufacturing plant in Sun Valley, part of LA county where she was able to not only produce her recipes but to co-pack vegan food products for other small growers and wholesale distributors. By 2010, she had 60 employees and 3 semi delivery trucks delivering all over SoCal. She was one of the only women in the San Fernando Valley of LA in food manufacturing and received an award for Creative Leadership by Valley Business Development. As a feminist business owner she paid the workers health insurance and provided a retirement plan out of her profits thereby creating undying loyalty.
Returning to My Roots
2000s - Ongoing
SPROUTIME IS NOW
2023
Her 20’ long installation was a call out to join a movement that cherishes the earth and all life. Labowitz’s intention was to create a bridge for the students at Cal Arts between art, activism and public life. This was the largest of her installs with “root mats” from cut trays of greens. The signs took the form of yard signs and were placed among the root mats. The installation was a meditation on life and the dying process. For over two weeks, the plant material broke down, began to smell and attracted flies and insects. At the end of the exhibition, the decomposing plant material was picked up by Metabolic Studio to add to their compost pile. Leslie was also co-producer of the Eco-Expo team of the Earth Edition project at Cal Arts.
SPROUTIME IS NOW, outdoor instillation, Futuring exhibition curated by Vera Petukhova, part of the Earth Edition Festival, CalArts, 2023.
Photo credit Laurie Peterson.
Video of all varieties Sproutime grows for market stand.
Farmers Market Now
2020 - ongoing
Labowitz retired in 2012 from the larger Sproutime business. As a part of her legacy she kept one farmers market in Santa Monica on Wednesdays. During COVID she was there every week providing healthy food for people who only left their home to come to the market. This work is a performative and community-based action that she documents on social media.
Anyone is welcome to visit Leslie at the market and do a “Toast to Life” with a free shot of wheatgrass juice. Art, Activism, feminism and entrepreneurial enterprise is very much “Alive.”