Green Furniture, Portsmouth, NH, 2008 Alchemical Garden, Newburyport, MA, 2010
Project Statement
Green Furniture is literally a couch made from grass. This piece is a prototype for lawn furniture to be made from local grasses, clover and edible plants.
This grass couch was inspired by my artistic desire to place people in direct contact with nature and a recent, frustrating personal search for a commercially manufactured couch made from sustainable, non-toxic materials. In a modern world advanced by technology, our experience of the real is often mediated through the virtual: television, movies or email. With the globalization of economies, widespread and ferocious industrialization, rapid, real time communication and commerce, and the shift to hypo-real lifestyles, the very nature of our lives has changed. Work is founded upon the exchange of information via technology. Leisure is often sedentary and indoor. Agriculture is managed by a distant corporation. Nature has become an abstract concept; something that we see through a car window, passing at 55 mph. With Green Furniture I aim to inspire deceleration, a pause to look and observe a landscape while literally asking a potential sitter to embrace the cool, green, comfortable grass. (Inspired by works by artists Daniel Spoerri and Greg Tate.)
The temporary grass couches installed as part of the Alchemical Garden Project in Newburyport are along the Clipper City Rail Trail where passers-by enjoy a break and visitors to Haley’s ice cream enjoy the view.
Add Comment