CULTIVATING CULTURE

Four artists were invited by the Visual Arts Center of NJ in Summit to a summer lab for social practice to discover and harness the bounty of available resources of a place (the Art Center and surrounding land and community). We used the gallery as our studios and the walls to map out our experiments. The public was invited to come in and engage with us and we had the opportunity to share our practices at the local farmers market.

This project merged two distinct meanings of culture: ARTS and CULTIVATION. The Art Center exists in the realm of ARTS while the town’s farmers market exists in the second meaning of culture.

On market day, I reintroduced vegetables, procured a week earlier from the Summit farmer’s market, to share with the public. But now they were fermented by harnessing local bacteria or “culture” from the Art Center’s gallery . This project merged the two meanings of culture that were once confluent – the arts and agriculture. Reconnecting people to their surroundings and community through Culture and all of its meanings.