My new direction has been inspired by some journals that my Dad wrote in my childhood. While home for spring break, I spoke with my parents separately about their experiences with organic gardening. My mom doesn't know what first interested her with organic gardening. She feels that it was just something that was typical of the era. In the seventies, she attended the University of New Hampshire and studied plant science. Her and some other students pushed to get one of the green houses to be purely organic. They were not able to do this then, but today this is now available for students there. When my parents met, my father was interested in gardening, but it was my mother who introduced him to choosing to grow things organically. I grew up working with my parents in the gardens, but I have not focused before on why they chose to grow certain things. My father chose to grow things to maybe influence growth of other plants or to distract insects. Some varieties worked better than others and with organic gardening there isn't much time to make mistakes. Once something worked, he would keep working that or try something different the following year. His journals were a way to look back and document what worked and what needed to be changed.
What I am anticipating for my project is as follows:
Part 1:
4 5'x5' oil/acrylic paintings for each year of the journals.
-These will be based off of each year's seeds. (1991, 1993, 1997, and 1998)
I have been researching each company and variety of seed that he chose to buy that year. It is really hard to find some of these seeds now. The paintings will be composed of images of these varieties. I will have each diagramed also to show what still can be found with these companies, if it can be found through another company and then if it is no longer available. It is really interesting to think that these varieties that I grew up with I can no longer eat.
Part 2:
6 3'x4' watercolor pencil drawings on paper
-These images will be what I consider "backdrops" for the body of work. These will be drawings taken from photographs of me growing up in the garden. These are what I consider documentation of my childhood rather than just a nostalgic image. I am not commenting on how wonderful it was, but more how interesting this was for a child. At an early age I knew how things grew, and the work that needed to go into this. With a combination of the other work, I hope that this will be more apparent.
Part 3:
Projects based off of excerpts from my father's journals. These might be purely text based or maybe even a document that people could take with them. My father has been interested in something happening with these journals so I would like to work with him on maybe even making them available for the public.
Part 4:
Exploration of organic gardening via growing my own vegetable garden. I will be working with my roomates to grow our own organic garden and document that. Through my father's and other's advice, I will be exploring concepts with gardening. Through this, I will collect imagery to potentially use for new work. Also, I am hoping to come up with an installation of sorts that will go with this other work.
