Category: Mainstream

While I bring a major rant on biodiversity and the media to the boil, here’s something that won’t be part of that mix. I’m sorry I missed it.

On Saturday, Aug. 16, at 3 p.m., the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park will host artist Leah Gauthier ¹ … The DeCordova Annual features Gauthier’s large installation entitled “Melon, 2008.” For this installation, Gauthier planted eight different types of heirloom melons on the Pollack Family Terrace. … This installation has grown throughout the exhibition, as the melons started as mere plantings and now have developed into mature fruit. In her Artist Talk and performance … Gauthier will harvest and prepare the melons with visitors. Taste is an essential element in this work, as is community building around food. By inviting viewers to have a unique and culinary experiences based on the richness of biodiversity, “Melon” will speak directly to the impoverishing influence of agricultural modernization. Gauthier’s work stems from the idea of social sculpture and the nourishing capacity of art as well as from a viewpoint of art as an action and not an object. … Gauthier’s work is … particularly interesting … because her installation is entirely organic. By placing agriculture in a specifically cultural context — the museum — Gauthier asks viewers to re-imagine the growing, harvesting, preparation, and consumption of food so that they may re-connect with some of humanity’s most fundamental activities.

And you know, it kinda sorta makes sense. You can try this sort of thing in a supermarket, and get quizzical looks. You can do it at a Farmers’ Market, but I suspect you would be preaching to the choir. Art lovers, though, could be a fertile audience. We’ve blogged about this sort of thing before — rice art and that bloke who used sorghum and wheat to mimic a housing development — mostly as an affectionate aside. But I wonder, maybe this really is the way to go to get the message across. After all, if a pickled shark can get everyone in a tizz, why not a frozen coconut?

Maybe I can get a Guggenheim to cultivate my garden? In any case, It’ll be fun to see how Gauthier’s Sharecropper thang works out.