One Straw Revolution
Cincinatti OH | 2002
Three month installation, “Ecovention” exhibit, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, in downtown Federal Reserve Bank Plaza. Curators: Amy Lipton and Sue Spaid.
Demonstration biointensive organic garden built with local volunteers, using local salvage, organic plants, soil. Harvested food was given to Cincinnati Food Bank. Sculptural planter boxes, soil, compost were donated to Civic Garden Center’s children and community gardens.
Cincinnati businesses donated the straw, PVC pipe, glass doors, violin cases, cast iron, plastic flowers, sticks and plants needed to construct this raised bed garden.
The garden takes its name from One Straw Revolution, a book by natural farming pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka. With Mr. Fukuoka’s method, biointensive farmers plant densely, never till the soil, use chemicals or prune. The addition of beneficial natural predators for pest control and planting lots of different types of plants are encouraged.
The glass doors salvaged from a solarium reveal each layer of decomposing waste from the CAC’s last exhibition and gives viewers a ringside seat to the process of composting. The drip irrigation system traveling along PVC pipe links individual beds to create a unified system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Spaid, Sue. “ECOVENTION“. Contemporary Arts Center, 2002.
