Plant Planning, Part Two
The more I’ve been thinking about how I regard plants, and how my landscape architect friends do, I’ve realized that the difference is not simply akin to painter versus installation artist, as I proposed in the last entry. It’s also that we’re privileging different parts of the plants.
Roots, stems, leaves/ Flowers, fruits, seeds
Roots, stems, leaves/ Flowers, fruits, seeds
That’s what we recited, practically chanted, trying to memorize plant parts for science class once upon a time (fifth grade, maybe?). As far as I know, that’s still the list kids learn.
Of late, roots and stems and flowers have tended to matter to me only insofar as they enabled the continued well-being of delicious leaves and fruits. Sure, sure, sometimes I nurture roots or flowers—though, curiously, mostly if they’re orange (carrots, nasturtiums, calendula…).
My friends love the whole plants, but most obviously pay attention to stems and leaves and flowers—the stuff that shows. Still, I know they worry about root ball size, for instance, or fruit dropping. I’m not sure they have strong feelings about seeds.
But, as you know, I love them—which got me thinking that for all of the environmental art I am familiar with, I don’t know of many projects that integrate seeds into artwork. I suppose you could argue that anyone who uses plants in a project does. But that’s not what I mean. I also don’t mean in the Minnesota State Fair Crop Art way (though the “paintings” are unbelievably awesome!). The seeds in that instance act like pigment rather than as ur-seeds.
In terms of projects that deal with seeds AS seeds, I can think of only a smattering:
Hans Haacke’s 1970 project “Bowery Seeds.” Haacke persuaded developers to leave a bit of the Brooklyn park uncultivated, and thus open to whatever airborne seeds might find their way to it. The result? An urban wilding, a product of chance, a riot of plants.
Kathryn Miller’s “Seed Bombs” (1992-1994) and “The Subdivision” (1992) both use native seeds to re-vegetate landscapes. About the former, she said “I designed these portable seed bombs for landscape re-vegetation purposes. They were thrown out into areas that were degraded, physically abused, or in need of vegetation. As a form of urban and suburban guerrilla activity, it was a small scale, non-sanctioned intervention in the landscape. The seed bombs were made available to museum visitors to take and throw somewhere they felt needed native plants, and in the process they assisted me with my project.”
Around the same time, Alan Sonfist began a fantastic grow-out project. Gathering seeds from the cracks in sidewalks in various cities, he cultivated them. Simple. Smart. And extremely provocative.
Basia Irland, Nisqually River; Washington State. Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa). 2008
A recent (2008+) and wonderful seed-specific project is by Basia Irland, entitled Ice Books. For this work, she creates various large blocks of ice—books—in which she embeds seeds from a specific watershed. The books are released into the watershed, and as they wend their way, they melt—thereby re-seeding the area with indigenous plant material.
I’m sure there must be plenty of other artists interested in seeds. If you know of seed-y art (not seedy art, I’m all set with that…), please, send along cites/sites.
In: Text · Tagged with: art, basia irland, seed
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