Portable Park IV
past-present-future
Portable Park IV
past-present-future
January 23 – February 5, 2012
Santa Monica Place
Working with artist Bonnie Ora Sherk and my graduate students from the Otis College of Art and Design Graduate Public Practice Program, I was project director for a reimagining and updating of Sherk’s Portable Parks I – III from 1970. Organized in conjunction with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival, Portable Park IV – past-present-future was installed in the Central Plaza of the Santa Monica Place Shopping Center.
This monumental-scale, multi-sensory, living sculpture consisted of a series of raised bed gardens made from straw wattles shaped like unfurling petals that were filled with organic fruit trees, flowers, vegetables and herbs. During the ten days of the project, the public could stroll through the garden or view it from the roof deck five stories above. At the conclusion of the project, we recycled the constructions materials back to the Landscape Department of the City of Santa Monica, sold plants to the public at deeply discounted prices and donated others to a local middle school and to a teen garden project in Wilmington, California, organized by the Slanguage Studio.
Visit the Getty Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival’s website: pacificstandardtimefestival.org
