Crop Circles and Remediation Field

GAL is very grateful to the New England Grass Roots Fund for the generous grant of $1500 to support the Alchemical Garden in 2011. These funds will help GAL to go forward this year with “Crop Circle and Remediation Field” our  living art installation and soil remediation project.

Rubedo (Red) Permaculture Tree Guild

Become a co-creator in our community articulture project by joining our Alchemical Garden Work Party  this Sunday, May 22nd from 12:00 – 3:00 .We will be sculpting serpentine mulch pathways and sprucing up the garden. Wear work clothes and, if you can, bring along a wheelbarrow, pitchfork or metal rake. GAL will provide light refreshments, eco and permaculture tips and levity.

As part of the Clipper City Rail Trail Birthday celebration, GAL will offer the rail trail celebrants the opportunity to “sow seeds for our sustainable future”  through planting black Kabuli garbanzo beans, and soy beans in the Alchemical Garden. These legumes will nourish the depleted soil and provide an edible crop for the community.

The Alchemical Garden is located at the south entrance of the Clipper City Rail Trail, 40 Parker Street Newburyport, MA 01950 and straddles the Haley’s Bike Spur.

Waiting in line for junk food.

The ubiquitous plastic bottle in our landfills, watersheds, and elsewhere are  the quintessential signifier of frivolous consumer waste and environmental pollution. Frogs are an important indicator species for crisis-level environmental degradation. The present epidemic of malformed, hermaphroditic and sterile frogs  is the harbinger of  zoological disaster.

GAL infiltrated Provincetown during the Provincetown Green Arts Festival with an ecovention spot lighting this dire consequence of waste and pollution on the New England environment. Our indigenous frog – mutated by water-born toxins with multiple flailing arms and legs –  awakened from winter hibernation and roamed the streets of Provincetown in seach of food. The frog’s aqueous habitat and biology has been so compromised by toxins from industrial, agricultural,and consumer waste , our amphibian must now rely solely on plastics for nutrients.

Our tragic  hero engaged passers-by as she moved through the the streets and into stores, restaurants and bars begging for sustenance in the form of plastic bottles.For being willing to screw the bottles into her skin, the frog gave her perpetrators the gift of a card with a suggested “Savage Ritual” that hopefully would inspire animal empathy in the participant.

The Alchemical Garden site February 2010

GAL is turning a desolate  field of weeds into a visually compelling garden that will educate and engage the community for years to come. Located on a 160′ x 25′ site near the south entrance  of  Newburyport’s Clipper City Rail Trail, the Alchemical Garden is a richly layered evolving art and horticulture experience  that is accessible on many different levels to the public.

Alchemical Garden is designed to become a model for a sustainable, interactive public garden through the use of symbiotic, low maintenance plantings and recycled materials.

The ancient discipline of Alchemy marries art and science and is famously known for transforming a common material into gold.  The Alchemical Garden will lead the community to transform on a number of levels :

Alchemical Garden with Spring Wheat "Crop Circles" June, 2011

BUILD COMMUNITY:  The Garden creates a gathering space for individuals to form a more intimate relationship with their community.  The space is designed with visual features and seating areas to compel passers-by to pause, reflect, and have a multi-sensory interactive experience ( sight, smell, touch, taste, smell) with the garden and the community.

NOURISH/HEAL:  The garden will nourish its visitors –  both literally and figuratively.  Pesticide free edible fruit will be nourishing to human and animal guests.  Also, the trees and plants have been selected specifically to ensure they work together to purify the toxins in the soil and to sustain themselves and a rich habitat for local fauna over time.

EDUCATE: Signage and sculptural features in the garden will highlight Newburyport’s history of innovation and will link the area’s past with its present. The garden will act as a living laboratory, by cleaning up the soil through the use of hyper-accumulating plants and engaging local students and members of the community in soil testing and monitoring the remediation of toxins. GAL will use the Alchemical Garden as a center for workshops and other events that will educate the public about soil contamination, remediation, ecosystems  and permaculture.

INSPIRE: The Alchemical Garden focuses on the web of relationships between people and the natural world. Signage in the garden will inform  and engage visitors to act in the interest of the community’s future. In addition to the construction of the art park, the Alchemical Garden project will contribute to the community in innovative ways though: educational workshops and interactive art performances that will seek to awaken each individual’s own capacity for imagination and action and to become more engaged stewards of the environment.

The Alchemical Garden is a multi-year project, with completion anticipated in 2013. GAL is grateful to the New England Foundation for the Arts for supporting our mission and  launching the first phase of the garden with a $20,000 grant. To fund our full proposal, we need an additional 136K over the next 24 months. To finish this first phase we have a 2011 fund-raising “target” of securing an additional $36,000 in private donations. GAL believes that no donation is too small and encourages anyone and everyone who believes this will be a valuable addition to both the rail trail and the city’s green mission to be a co-creator. GAL is grateful to the Urban Arts Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art for acting as our fiscal sponsor so that donation can be tax-deductible.

“Funded in part by the Fund for the Arts, a public art program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.”

To make a tax deductable donation to the Alchmical Garden project click here . For The Green Artists League to receive the donation, Alchemical Garden/Green Artists League must be put in the Designation Field on the Urban Arts/Network for Good website.

Our tragic hero will  engage passers-by and crowds as he moves through the festival begging for sustenance in the form of plastic bottles. Ubiquitous plastic bottles act as the signifier of frivolous consumer waste and environmental pollution, while our indigenous frog, an important indicator species for crisis-level environmental degradation is the harbinger of  zoological disaster. For more information on “Appearances” and the Provincetown Green Arts Festival go to Provincetown Conservation Trust.

New Eden Organic Community Gardens Plot Plan

In the spring of 2008, The Green Artists League became one of the first participants in The New Eden Collaborative – the central environmental mission of the First Parish Church of Newbury.

High Rise Nesting Co-op boxes and Radient City Hen House

First Parish’s goal of bring together individuals and environmental groups to develop sustainable community through organic community gardens, organic chicken co-op, and organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and community events was fertile ground for GAL’s first Articulture project.

The participatory art projects at New Eden is the first of GAL’s  3  ”Articulture” community art projects.

GAL inspired projects at the New Eden Collaborative from 2009-2011 include:

• 2009-2010 New Eden Organic Community Garden Plot created by GAL artist/architect  Stephenie Strogney and myself. The garden was designed to break the utilitarian grid of traditional community gardens to cultivate the contemplative and relational aspects of gardening and community. Plots were clustered into “neighborhoods” and paths were configured as to require the walk to turn several times to get to the other side of the garden as a way to increase awareness of  time and place.

• 2009 “Measure Up”  brings relational aesthetics to the garden. In this participatory community action New Eden Community gardeners in their introductory meeting  were asked to work together to define,  measure and plot out the community garden based on  GAL design. As gardeners worked together to define each other’s spaces individual skills and personalities became apparent with in the collaborative process and quickened the nascent community.

• 2009-present “New Eden Mural” A 35′ mural at First Parish Church, Newbury with imagery created from New Eden Collaborative members’ vision of what makes a sustainable community.
  

  New Eden Sustainable Community Mural in Progress

• 2010-present  ”Radiant City”  GAL artist Erin Stack is working with  Chicago based artist Andrew Barco and the New Eden Chicken Co-op share holders to build ”utopian chicken architecture”  out of reclaimed materials as playful practive of animal empathy. For 2011, GAL will be painting an “inspiring” mural inside the coop for the chickens and expanding the chicken yard .
• 2010-present “Conversation Shelter”  GAL artist Stephenie Strogney, GAL intern Cathy Stephens, and my self worked with Cindy Schartman,  Ben Twombly and other New Eden Collaborative members to design and construct a public trellised sitting area with in the private garden plot of one of the New Eden Gardeners. “Conversation Shelter” is an opportunity for dialogue on  issues of community and private space.
• 2011 “Waste Folly” an artful compost container constructed from reclaimed materials is planned for the upcoming growing season.

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On May 3rd 2010, the City of Newburyport  received a grant from the Fund for the Arts at the New England Foundation for the Arts in support of the Alchemical Garden –an art park and edible public garden being installed on the southern gateway to the Clipper City Rail Trail by the Green Artists League (GAL). This prestigious award of $20,000 is the result of a request submitted by the City and co-written by the Planning Office and GAL. Letters of support were sent by both Transition Newburyport and the Coastal Trails Coalition.

Part science, part art, Alchemical Garden will remediate the remaining toxins in the soil while honoring the long legacy of agricultural and  industrial history at the site—from farm and brick factory,  to rail corridor and 20^th century industry–to the products and services of the more than 100 businesses currently residing in the Industrial parks surrounding the garden.

“We are looking at the Alchemical Garden as a gift by the community for the community,” said GAL artist, Erin Stack. “GAL is dedicated to co-creating public art which inspires, stirs the imagination and is inclusive, educational, and sustainable.” Using the principles of permaculture, an innovative and “green” gardening method, plantings will require minimal maintenance once established. The art and architectural features will be created mostly from living plant material, recycled materials and benign, non-hazardous, industrial waste.

“The Green Artists League is uniquely positioned to design and install this innovative, interactive, and grant-funded garden on the Rail Trail,” said Geordie Vining, Senior Project Manager for the Newburyport Planning Office. “I am not aware of anyone else who can integrate landscaping, sculpture, education, and outreach in this way.  The G.A.L. has an interesting track record with the New Eden Garden collaborative in Newbury and the community garden at the Griffin House for Aged Men, and they are committed to fund-raising and maintenance.  I think their energy will add a lot to the Clipper City Rail Trail and the community.”

The Alchemical Garden is a multi-year project, with completion anticipated in 2012, with a 2010 fund-raising “target” of securing an additional $36,000 in private donations. GAL believes that no donation is too small and encourages anyone and everyone who believes this will be a valuable addition to both the rail trail and the city’s green mission to be a co-creator. GAL is grateful to the Urban Arts Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art for acting as our fiscal sponsor so that donation can be tax-deductible.

“Funded in part by the Fund for the Arts, a public art program of the New England Foundation for the Arts.”

Guy GAL Tim Gaudreau

New Hampshire Sunday News (Manchester, NH) April 25, 2010

This eco-artist lives green

By JIM KOZUBEK

Special to the Sunday News

PORTSMOUTH

IT WAS LATE February, the winter light pale and snow remained in dirty patches. Tim Gaudreau emerged from a reconverted barn turned art studio on this old farmstead on Jones Avenue, carrying a pile of firewood, and smiling big. His biggest problem — he was running out of vegetables. ”By this time of year, it’s running out,” he announced. Gaudreau is a vegetarian, and he grows most of his own food in an extensive raised-bed garden in his backyard, which he stores to eat in the winter. Squash, onions, carrots, and a pumpkin was turned into a pumpkin bisque with roasted potatoes. Chickens squabble and shuffle in coops behind his studio, of which he uses to harvest eggs on a daily basis, but he doesn’t eat doesn’t eat them. “They’re pets,” he says. “They’re our friends.”

As a professional artist, Gaudreau is rare as one who is able to make all of his annual income each year from his art; as an environmental advocate, unique in his embodiment of ideals that he extols.

Cars in his driveway, a pair of diesel Volkswagens, one plastered with a “Free Tibet” sticker, run on biodiesel from local distributor Simply Green, LLC. He installed a solar hot water system and passive solar devices from Manchester-based Solar Components Corp., and he is installing a photovoltaic system.

National Public Radio chortles on the air in his studio.

Sleeves of harvested honeycomb from a backyard apiary lean on the floor.

Gaudreau keeps hives of bees on his property and talks about the perils and disappearance of bees and bats in the Northeast, and on all things ecology-related. He thinks his sympathies and awareness developed at a young age, probably due to his own biology. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog,” he said.

As holder of an MFA and a self-described “eco-artist,” whose photography and sculpture is designed to “raise eco-consciousness,” he has made a mark, capturing a $30,000 grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and others from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

His gorilla tactics have included a decent on the City of Boston, with fellow rabble rousers, the Green Artists League, in which he wore a polar bear costume, asking passersby for spare ice.

Even as his work is overt and provocative, Gaudreau has not shied from turning criticism on himself. In one stunt, which resulted in an exhibited piece called “Self-Portrait As Revealed by Trash,” he photographed every single thing he threw out for an entire year, building it into a 5,000-picture collage.

“The details about it … it was a piece of advocacy, but it was very intimate,” Gaudreau said.

It is how Gaudreau met his wife, Atlanta McIlwraith, a social enterprise manager for Stratham-based Timberland Company, who saw the art project as an exceptional “singles advertisement.”

The couple married in 2007. Gaudreau built her an earthen couch in the backyard that sprouts grass. “Adults don’t sit on the grass much anymore, so this was a way to do that,” he said.

Atlanta's Living Couch

He subsequently began several commissioned projects for Timberland, which ranged in pay from a couple hundred dollars to more than $10,000, including a sign for an Earth Day ad, created entirely from Dumpster diving, which read “CHANGE THE CLIMATE.”

For the sign, he built each letter out of a different waste product: The T was made out of trashed electronics, another T from compact discs, an H from plastic bottles, a C from aluminum cans, an M from plastic shopping bags, a G from thrown-out toys, and so on.

“It was a great demonstration for kids,” Gaudreau said. “I asked how many of these toys do you think are broken, and it turns out, all of them were serviceable.”

Timberland also asked him to create a demonstration for a new recycled boot line, which he did, with a gigantic boot made out of plastic bottles and bootlaces woven from discarded shopping bags.

The ad for a campaign called “Give Plastic the Boot” began an international campaign for the company.

“The image appeared all over the world, so it was very exciting for me,” he said.

Gaudreau’s income is derived from a mix of private and public commissioned projects. He led a project at the Lincoln Street School in Exeter to build an outside classroom out of the logs from a 250-year-old tree that had fallen on the property.

“This tree was pretty important to the identity of the school, and its loss was palpable,” he said.

With volunteer support from 50 Timberland employees and the school, he helped create a circular classroom with wooden benches encasing sculptures of bears, turtles and birds cast from recycled aluminum cans, based on the concept of a Native American medicine wheel.

“I wanted to create something with strong roots to aboriginal history, something that ties back to all of history,” he said. “Each stone has a meaning.”

Copyright, 2010, Union Leader Corp

Erin's Frog Painting in 5 Year Plan Art Book

Exciting News!! GAL founder and Co-director Erin Stack is one of only 32 artists internationally who have been tapped to contribute to a magnificent green arts fundraising project!!

Click here to read the press release.

Click here to visit the 5 Year Plan website.