The AgArts council will host a grant funding potluck this Saturday, aimed to raise money for agriculture-related artwork. The grant funding will be based on donations from potluckers and will be distributed to the project that acquires the most votes.

The unique format is geared to provide an unobstructed opportunity for artists to have their work funded without worrying about paperwork and committees, said Joe Lynch, owner of Onion Creek Farm.

“I think it’s a great way to bring the art community together a little bit and think of a way to do some projects you might be interested in without having to go through a huge funding process,” Lynch said.

AgArts is an organization made up of nearly 100 members of ISU students, faculty and Ames community members. When they talk about art, they don’t mean cornhusk squirrel feeders and bean-can birdhouses. They are pursuing what Iowa Poet Laureate Mary Swander calls an “intersection of art and agriculture.”

“It seems like odd bedfellows, artists and farmers, but they actually have more in common than you think,” she mused. “Just the fact that they’re in business with themselves is a huge commonality.”

The organization began as an offshoot from a play Swander wrote for her students called “Farmscape” that met immediate success, and is now in its fourth year of production.

The AgArts Local Wonders Dinner will be at the MonteBello Bed and Breakfast on Saturday at 6:30 p.m.

AgArts encourages artists to pitch their ideas for projects, but doesn’t want anything more than a paragraph for a proposal. Artists “just need an idea,” said Lynch, and artworks can be anything from a quilt, a landscaping project or even a play–so long as it encompasses the aesthetics of art with the utility of agriculture.

“When you look at the old rural life or the new rural life, it was filled with art,” said Swander. “But they were folk art, so they were practical.”