Land-based social practice and urban ecological art has a long history. As Liena Vayzman wrote in Art Practical,
The collaborative, socially engaged practices of today have more in common with works like Bonnie Ora Sherk’s Crossroads Community (The Farm) (1974–1980) than they do with the large-scale environmental Earthworks of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer. An environmental piece with multiple stakeholders whose educational initiatives continue today, The Farm was one of the first brownfield projects by the Trust for Public Land.
1) Agnes Denes, Wheatfield—A Confrontation, Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, 1982.
After months of preparations, in May 1982, a 2-acre wheat field was planted on a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty. Two hundred truckload of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by hand and cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand and the furrows covered with soil. the field was maintained for four months, cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an irrigation system set up. the crop was harvested on August 16 and yielded over 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion created a powerful paradox. (Text and photograph by Agnes Denes)
2) Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape, at West Houston and Laguardia Place NYC, 1978. (warning: link goes to artist’s website which has autoplay audio)
It constituted an effort to recapture a lost, pre-colonial landscape at the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place. Sonfisthired historians, botanists and various scientific researchers to replant indigenous plant species, including trees and wildflowers like violets and Black-Eyed Susans, on a small area of land in Manhattan. This effort saw, he claimed, the return of bird species to the area, such as hummingbirds, not seen there since the days of New Amsterdam.(image via; text source)
3 & 4) Bonnie Ora Sherk, The Farm (Crossroads Community). Army Street freeway interchange, San Francisco, 1974.
From 1974 to 1987, the derelict spaces underneath and beside the freeway sprouted corn stalks, vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, goats, children, and circuses—all under the umbrella of art and ecology. On an accumulated seven acres located partially underneath and adjacent to the then Army Street freeway interchange in San Francisco, they—with the help of the community and collaborators—turned two warehouses, concrete, and open space into a site-specific sculpture, farm, community center, school without walls, and human and animal theater. The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Make-a-Circus, and The Jones Family all took up residence there, as did artists, poets, dancers, punks, kids, gardeners, animals, and members of the community. (text and image 3 via, photo by Vicky Pollack; image 4 via)
Post originally inspired by the Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond in which Peter Selz offers a broad survey of politically emboldened artworks.
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