Dec 10, 2008
I first met Marcia Eames-Sheavly, a youth program leader in Cornell University’s Garden-Based Learning Program, a number of years ago, at a garden-based education conference where she gave a wonderful keynote speech. I’ve always kept up with her work, because she’s written so much about gardening with kids that I think is incredibly good. She’s tops in our field. I’m also inclined to love Marcia’s work because she’s from Cornell (home of Liberty Hyde Bailey, the inspiration for so much of my work). Next to UC, Cornell is the closest thing I have to a mother ship.
In addition to supporting the work of Extension educators, Marcia teaches college students at Cornell. One of her classes is the Art of Horticulture. The goals of the class are interesting: “to give horticulture students a chance to explore the world of art…and art students a chance to discover the world of horticulture.”
Marcia’s class enables students from all disciplines to consider plants as the “subject of art, as well as a material and art form.” Living up to the high bar set by Liberty Hyde Bailey, the class is hands-on and experiential. It’s labor-intensive, but the results have been rather unusual. And rather phenomenal.
In 2005, Marcia had a student named Alex Lovallo. Alex created a sod (yes, sod!) sofa. Amazingly creative. Amazingly wonderful. And much loved and much used. Such creativity should be rewarded and it was: Marcia offered Alex a summer job. As part of his work, Alex went to three diverse areas of New York state - urban, suburban, and rural. Working with youth – and using their designs – three living sculptures were created. Again, the furniture was constructed from living plant material. (BTW, Alex is now a graduate student in Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at SUNY in Buffalo. I made contact with him yesterday, and he has a bright future. My future feels brighter knowing there are young people like him).
Young people are excited about these opportunities to shape earth and use it, to create a built environment from plants, terming it “cutting edge.” Marcia’s students have loved the opportunity to make spaces to hang-out, outside. They’ve reconnected with the outdoors, and enjoy doing something creative. Marcia observes that none of her students questions his or her own ability to move soil around, or put sod down, or bend tree limbs to a particular shape. Yet, they are hesitant and have self-doubt about their other, more traditional areas of creativity, such as painting. Creating furniture with plants has provided confidence, and an entrée into world without the usual sense of drudgery.
Marcia thinks that working on living plant sculptures imparts a message to college students that is vital right now: “Slow down.” She tells her students, “Hold your head up as you walk through campus, look around you and write about it.” Some have noticed fall colors, and have articulated that they never knew trees were as individual as people. Marcia thinks that in general, we’re all too plugged in.
“We’re worried,” Marcia told me, “because there’s a lot to worry about now. We’re always rushing to the next thing. But the natural world can provide a way to slow down. For students particularly, the opportunity to draw or paint or work on final project or journal outdoors is wonderful.”
A group of students in one of her special topics classes also created “Turfwork!”, a more than one-acre piece of artwork that can be viewed from the air. In addition to providing a collaborative design process, it got students thinking about land and its uses.
Sod has become media, too, in addition to being a sturdy, living sculpture. Members of the Cornell garden-based learning program created a sod sofa across from a coffee shop in Trumansburg, New York; this link sends you to video that documents construction and care of the living furniture. (If you use these directions and create a work of art, Marcia would love to know). People respond to these living sculptures. Passers-by have stopped, intrigued. The sod sofa has become a point of community engagement, and is used as a place to read, to drink coffee, to socialize.
And sod sofas have become a place where many college students, for perhaps the first time, are interacting with plants. Will any of these students become farmers or urban agriculturalists or even gardeners? That remains to be seen. I hope so.
Like many of you, Marcia is a gardener. She is interested in taking the next step and wonders…how might you incorporate food into a living sculpture such as this? If you have ideas, please email Marcia.
"A Garden for Everyone. Everyone in a Garden"
By Rose Hayden-Smith
Author - Emeritus - UCCE Advisor in Digital Communications in Food Systems & Extension Education; Editor, UC Food Observer; Food and Society Policy Fellow
Author - Emeritus - UCCE Advisor in Digital Communications in Food Systems & Extension Education; Editor, UC Food Observer; Food and Society Policy Fellow