This crop art featuring a portrait of the Republican presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is in a field owned by Hank Choate of Liberty Township.
LIBERTY TWP., MI -- Crop art of
and Paul Ryan in one of Hank Choate's cornfields is delivering a political message that's visible only from the skies above.
is chairman of the Jackson County Republican Party and co-chairman of the county's Romney-Ryan campaign. So he jumped at the chance to have a portrait of the Republican presidential ticket carved out of one of his fields when a crop artist contacted him.
The result is an intricate portrait of Romney and Ryan on 10 acres of land near South Jackson and Liberty roads. It's created a buzz on social media.
The crop artist, Shawn Stolworthy of Idaho, used a John Deere tractor, a rototiller and a global positioning system to sculpt a portrait that he had designed on his laptop computer, Choate said.
It took Stolworthy about five hours Friday night to create the crop art.
"He came in Friday evening at about 6:30," Choate said. "I showed him fields that he can work with. So at about 7 o'clock he started it. I said, 'You're going to run out of daylight in about an hour.' He said, 'No problem.' With the GPS system he does a lot of work at night. It's cooler at night."
The rototiller is about 4-feet-wide and the GPS system is accurate to within about an inch of the actual location, Choate said, compared to the 3-inch accuracy of the GPS system Choate uses on the farm.
The artist applied lime to the ground to give it a white cast. The rototiller dug up soil to provide a darker contrast.
The work was completed about midnight. Choate didn't know at that time how impressive the work was, but he found out after Stolworthy took some pictures from an airplane.
Stolworthy designs and cuts corn mazes, but he's created several corn mazes this election season to support Romney and Ryan. "I asked him if he was commissioned by the Romney campaign and he said, no, he is doing this on his own and it's his way to support the Romney-Ryan campaign."
Stolworthy was in the area to work on corn mazes and a farm equipment salesman in Adrian referred him to Choate.