Enjoy Your Garden
A Public Art Project by Ben, Mary, Moya & Robin
We went into Robin's preschool class in South LA to paint some some giant fruits and vegetables with the kids. Robin and her teaching assisant cut out big apple, banana, broccoli and carrot shapes from butcher paper ahead of time. The kids did a short lesson about produce, identifying real apples, bananas, broccoli and carrots that Robin brought in and talking about what colors they were. Then we put on our smocks, grabbed our brushes and painted.
The following weekend the four of us met in East LA, where Mary had identified an empty lot near the corner of East Third Street and South Ford Boulevard. The lot is overshadowed by the the 710 and 60 freeways, which intersect a stonesthrow away, and faces a Metro Gold Line stop and a popular branch of King Taco across Third Street. We chose the location because of its visibility and because of the lack of greenery and fresh produce nearby.
We took some time to set up our four pieces of produce, propping them up on broomsticks, and painted a banner reading, "Enjoy Your Garden / Brought to you by the kids at 41st and Central" in English and Spanish. We spent a lot of time on choosing the wording for our sign, and liked this phrasing because it wasn't preachy, it didn't focus too specifically on a single message like "this should be a community garden" or "eat fresh fruits and vegetables", and because it gave credit to the kids and framed the project as a fun, friendly, gift from South LA to East LA.
After setting up the garden, we interviewed several people who were standing around at the Metro stop and at King Taco, asking them two questions:
1. How far do you have to travel to buy fresh fruits and vegetables?
2. What does a healthy neighborhood mean to you?
Reflections:
• We enjoyed all three components of our projects: painting with the kids, setting up a garden in a vacant lot, and having conversations with people.
• It was great that there were people nearby to see our garden, but it would have been better if they had been walking directly by instead of being separated by traffic.
• Asking an open-ended question ("What does a healthy neighborhood mean to you?") was great because people responded with all sorts of things that we hadn't been thinking about.
• We talked about getting high school kids from East LA involved in the project. That could be a fun part of a more extensive project.
• It would have been great if the project had engaged so many people that they started interacting with other viewers and passersby: asking questions, having conversations, sharing stories and swapping ideas. Because it was a quick project, our first attempt and didn't have a lot of pedestrian traffic directly in front of the site, we had to actively engage people in what we were doing. In future projects it would be great to explore ways to draw enough people in that the project sparks conversations and starts to take on a life of its own.
