Dirt By Amy Stewart

Ecuador: Flower Power

A very cool ten-minute documentary on Nevado Ecuador, one of the farms I visited when I was researching Flower Confidential.  Check it out here.

Sam's Club Sells Fair Trade Flowers

It's very cool to see a large company like Sam's Club get behind the Fair Trade program.  They're now offering Fair Trade flowers for sale on their website.  You can read all about Fair Trade flowers here, but the important thing to know is that in addition to labor and environmental standards, a portion of the purchase price goes directly to the workers for a community development project (like a microlending program, a program to supply families with livestock, computer education, etc.)  This means that people who work on these farms are not just guaranteed a good, safe job, they also have some new options to help them move out of poverty. 

It also tends to be the more "high-end" farms that participate, meaning that you may be getting higher quality flowers from Fair Trade farms.  Really, this is a winning situation for everybody, and the fact that Sam's Club is participating means that some very big buying decisions are being made that reward these farms that really make a difference.

Check the Fair Trade Flowers website for more sources of Fair Trade flowers, including 1-800 Flowers and Organic Bouquet.

The Paperback!

Complete with a new afterword.  Coming soon to a bookstore near you....

'Decapitated Eggplant'--SOLD

8 x 10 oil on board. Click here to bid. Go here to see all auctions on eBay.

Another eggplant from the same series.  I'm thinking about doing more fruits and vegetables with their heads cut off.  Keeps it interesting.

These are the last paintings that will be up for a while--I'm on the road doing book tour stuff for a couple weeks.

'Death of an Eggplant'

8 x 10 inch oil on board.  Click here to bid. Go here to see all eBay auctions.

My editor asked for an eggplant painting.  You'd think it would be easy to make eggplants interesting, but I was having a hard time coming up with something compelling, so I cut its head off.

Much better.

I ended up doing a whole series of these, so here's one that didn't go to my editor.

Eco-Friendly Flowers in the New York Times

"And as in other industries with increasing demand for green products, the floral industry is debating what is environmentally correct. Should flowers be organic — that is, grown without synthetic or toxic pesticides? Or should the emphasis be on fair trade, meaning that the workers who grow and cut them are safe and well paid? Or should consumers favor flowers grown locally, not flown or trucked over long distances? In other words, what, exactly, is a green flower?"

Read the whole article here.

Book Tour Dates

I'm headed back out on the road soon.  If you're in Spokane, Springfield, IL, Virginia, Baltimore, New York, or New Mexico, check the Events page for details. 

More dates coming soon...it's going to be a busy spring...