Art for Eat’s Sake:
Last summer, residents of Vancouver’s Southeast False Creek neighborhood were drawn into an unusual artistic experiment. On a vacant lot littered with the rusty remnants of the neighborhood’s industrial past, artist Holly Schmidt led volunteers in designing, building, planting,and harvesting a thriving container garden.
Two urban agriculture projects
It may not have been the nadir of my dimness, but it was certainly the most twitlike thing I did last weekend. Believing the end time was the start time, I arrived at the Grow project’s mason-bee workshop three hours late, just after the participants had left. Still, the enthusiasm of artist Holly Schmidt and landscape architecture student Chloe Bennett shone on undiminished. Standing in the middle of what’s been dubbed the “Bulkhead Urban Agriculture Lab”, a public-art project on the south shore of False Creek, just west of the Olympic Village, they generously shared their knowledge and insights.
Artists and Gardens: A Growing Concern
A cold wind blows off the grey waters of Vancouver’s False Creek. On a grassy promontory, just west of the Olympic Village and north of the former city works yard, a garden is being dismantled. Large planters, fashioned out of repurposed shipping bags and perched on second-hand wooden pallets, have yielded up their summer bounty of herbs, berries, grains, vegetables and edible flowers. Workshops have been given, walks have been conducted and seeds have been exchanged. More importantly, the garden has sown a large crop of community interest and environmental involvement.
Grow
Grow was a public art project situated on the periphery of the Olympic Village in South East False Creek, Vancouver. As part of the Grow project, The Bulkhead Urban Agriculture Lab was an intervention into the last remaining section of undeveloped seawall on the south side of False Creek. Responding to the industrial remnants in this vacant lot, the project posed different solutions for growing food in a post-industrial landscape while creating an informal social space for the sharing of knowledge and ideas.