Brooks: Seed meets ‘Speed’ as Keanu Reeves gets introduction to Minnesota crop art

If you spent hundreds of hours gluing thousands of seeds into the shape of Keanu Reeves, you’d probably wish the star knew that his face had earned a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair.

But the fair ended weeks ago. Crop artist Katherine Erickson is home in Duluth. Keanu Reeves is on Broadway, starring in a revival of “Waiting for Godot” with his “Bill and Ted” costar Alex Winter.

“Spending 300 hours on somebody’s face, it can’t not cross your mind,” said Erickson, a software engineer who created “Seed,” a pun-filled homage to the ‘90s blockbuster “Speed.”

For weeks, for months, for up to 10 hours a day as the contest deadline neared, she maneuvered tiny grains of quinoa, millet and amaranth into a crop art movie poster, starring: Beanu Reeves, Sandra Burdock, Dennis Popcorn, Chaff Daniels.

“My goal was to make people laugh,” she said. “And then the goal was just to finish.”

Crop quiz, hotshot. You braved the long lines in the Agriculture/Horticulture building to see “Seed.” You think the star of Speed should see it too. What do you do?

An email arrived from the Minnesota State Fair this week, passing along a note from a stranger, along with a recent photo of a bearded Keanu Reeves.

I’m hoping you will deliver a message to Katherine Erickson of Duluth. I took a picture of her “Seed” submission and showed it to Keanu Reeves. After seeing Waiting for Godot in New York, my friend and I went behind the theater to get autographed. I showed Keanu the picture, told him he was immortalized in crop art and that the artist won a blue ribbon. His response was, “that’s amazing!”

I thought she’d appreciate knowing he saw her piece.

Erickson did appreciate it. Very much.

“I assumed it would take some viral Reddit post to reach someone that famous,” she said. “And I have a very deep appreciation of low tech. I’m talking to you on a flip phone.”

In the end, it was a low-tech solution that brought Beanu to Keanu. Just a human, waiting outside a stage door to share something they liked with someone they liked.

It’s hard to explain crop art to people who’ve never watched a Minnesotan take their feelings and a bunch of beans and glue them all together on a board. Everything Minnesota loves, everything Minnesota hates, everything that makes Minnesota laugh finds its way to the crop art competition.

The 451 entries submitted this year ranged from political satire to heartfelt memorials to corny puns to fine art ("Ceci n’est pas un corn dog.”)

Erickson is already getting ready for the 2026 fair. She and the Duluth crop art group Seed AfFAIR are hoping to recruit a few new artists to join the fun. The beauty of crop art, she said, is how many people have a message to share, and are willing to spend countless hours gluing seeds on boards to get that message across.

“I’m under no illusion that [Reeves] was able to look closely” at the picture, she said. “Or even see the puns.”

So if this story ever finds its way to Keanu Reeves: Zoom in on the photo, Keanu Reeves. Drink it in. You’re looking at hundreds of hours of work and 15 different types of seeds, beans and grains. Turnip seeds. Poppy seeds. Black lentils. Flax. Red millet. Hulled millet. Two different types of amaranth. The hair? Wild rice. The airborne bus from the movie poster that was bursting through a wall of flame is now flying through a wall of popcorn kernels.

But “Seed” made a lot of people smile. A stranger and a superstar just gave everyone an excuse to smile again.