Inherent in the act of growing food is the forced confrontation between natural and built. Trellises provide structure, but bean vines remain unpredictable. This idea became the undergraduate fine arts thesis work I began in 2012 with Kentucky blue bean plants (selected for their long, thin, fast-growing vines) seeded in the component parts of painting: stretcher bars, paint, and canvas. The resulting harvest was a collaboration between my beans and me, raising questions of where (and when) food can be grown and what purposes painting can serve.