garden space

This is a space behind the Visual Arts Center that is slowly but surely being transformed into a creative garden space. My friend (she's the one in the pic) and I are working to help start this garden space. The idea is for kids mainly to have a creative space to work, play, and get inspiration. It's not much yet, especially since its winter now, but in the spring it should be popping with all the bulbs we planted. This picture is what it first looked like when we started at the beginning of the semester. We found so much broken bottle glass and food wrappers. There were also piles of bricks that we recycled, some for the kilns that were fireproof and others for walkways.


As the lot is between the backyards of two houses on Floyd street, there were already some plants there, as well as a few "volunteer" plants. We worked with what we had at first. Later we got some good donations of bulbs and perennials, even a pomegranate tree!

So we planted some grass seed as well...it needed it.





I'm not sure that it's necessarily "earth art" as of now. But I do think it may move in that direction. Our boss found bamboo and made a trellis type structure. Also we tried to arrange the plants/trees in a way that invites people in and encourages an interactive space. We hope to use what we find (for example there was this old street lamp just sitting in the lot, and they plan to weld bars to it to make a fence structure to keep cars out) to make this space. There is some talk of installing a structure (maybe like a fort or tent or something!), but definitely we've started livening up the space with the birdhouse and picnic table. I think the process found in many works of earth art of choosing a space and letting it help guide the idea to end up with a piece that is both aesthetically interesting and naturally "beautiful", and that also fits in peacefully with the earth and brings community members together is a necessary and wonderful process.
The idea reminded me a little of the video Jake Galle showed in class of the Fallen Fruit artist collective project with the fruit trees, as well as The Omnivores Dilemma corn field. I'm really interested in ideas that bring people in the community together to create a common, productive and environmentally beneficial project. Although this garden project is not as cool as Mel Chins' Revival Field garden, we definitely did help clean up the space and get rid of a lot of garbage. The project was just started in September and already there are artists, welders, community members and members of the visual arts center, as well as neighbors all willing to help and contribute.