1st Pennsylvania plan shared for Fascination of Plants Day 2015!
WoMo Artists, Maryann Worrell (Arcadia University) & Doug Mott will build a participatory installation called Crisis Farm: Seed to Table. With help from the Street Road Artists Space, this portable garden & gallery exhibition aim to cultivate community-wide fascination with essential elements of our natural food resources:
seed, soil and water
Opening day is May 2nd. Visitors will be invited to a family-style table crafted of recycled materials and inspired by WoMo-conducted interviews with local families, school kids and farmers. The table will offer ~22 settings each with a bowl of soil, a small dish of seeds, a cup of water and garden tool utensil. Each visitor can plant a seed (or more) at their setting.
This is the first moment of connecting where food comes from to the growing process.
May 18th will be a special day designed to fascinate the larger community (onsite & via media). This day and the full program are designed to draw attention to the fragile economic state of the family farmer; the circumstances related to a nation full of fast food; and the origin of food outside of a supermarket.
At a June “planting party” artists and visitors will move the seedlings from the original bowls to the large garden planter in the center of the table.
During the closing harvest in July visitors will pick, clean, cut and share the produce in a family-style meal while enjoying photos and stories of the previous events.
Want to dig in? Contact Maryann here to learn more about installation plans.
About Maryann: She earned the very first MA in Art and Ecology from Burren College of Art (BCA) at National University of Ireland, GalwayShe is a professor in the Department of Art and Design at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania.
Maryann explains, “During my time at BCA, I focused on the depletion of natural food resources, which led to the development of a small portable community garden. It is still in operation on campus and you can see photos on my web site, maryannworrell.com. At that time, I also had a gallery show, called Crisis Farm Lab, which invited the viewer to take seeds, water and soil and encouraged the audience to grow or extend their own gardens. Since returning to the US (Philadelphia, PA,) I have been developing an extension to the Crisis Farm Lab.”