Fritz Haeg considers lawns and gardens in new exhibit

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Saturday, February 02, 2008

No, "Attack on the Front Lawn" doesn't look like an exhibit you might typically find in a contemporary arts venue such as Arthouse. But then it might be a bit of stretch to call "Attack," which runs through March 16, an exhibit.

That's because Los Angeles-based artist and architect Fritz Haeg has set up what is essentially a community resource center on sustainable gardening, a small greenhouse and a funky gathering space.

A large-screened, geodesic-domed tent occupies Arthouse's main gallery. The tent serves as the base site for "How to Eat Austin," a weekly series of free Saturday workshops related to sustainable food production, from compost and garden design to cooking and marketing a harvest. Several of the gallery walls are covered with corkboard onto which informational materials on sustainable gardening and food production are tacked. Inside the tent are mats and pillows, beckoning you to crawl in and lounge and read.

Metal shelves line the floor-to-ceiling gallery windows that face busy, traffic-filled Congress Avenue and are filled with trays of seedling pots. Once the seedlings — all vegetables and herbs — get established, they'll be transferred to Sierra Ridge, a South Austin affordable-living apartment complex managed by the nonprofit organization Foundation Communities, where in mid-March Haeg will transform a patch of public lawn into a community garden.

The South Austin garden will be the fifth in Haeg's "Edible Estates" project, where he has replaced domestic front lawns — the chemical-fed, water-hungry, climate-defying green patches that have come to symbolize, as Haeg sees it, conformity and excess — with edible landscapes appropriate to local culture and climate. The first "edible estate" was planted in the front yard of a house in Salina, Kan., the geographic center of the United States. Since then, Haeg has planted gardens in Southern California, New Jersey and in a public park in London. Large color photographs of the first four edible estates — all of which are still functioning gardens — fill the walls of one gallery at Arthouse.

"I knew I wanted to do a project [ ... ] that could be equally important to everyone no matter what their experience," Haeg said, taking a break from planting seeds last week before the exhibit opened. "Usually a contemporary art institution is pretty isolated from anything outside itself. I don't want to be a part of that. I think the goal of the artist is to communicate to everyone."

Attention to food and the land it is grown on is what Haeg is hoping to communicate through his exhibit, workshops and projects. Collaboration is everything. Unlike most solo exhibitions that occupy contemporary arts venues, Haeg's is not a creative experiment that focuses solely on himself or his point of view or his monumental art objects. Haeg's work is about actions, not stuff.

"I hadn't been to Austin before I started working on this project," he said. "So I have to rely on those who know this place and this climate and growing patterns better than I do." The Sustainable Food Center, Travis County Master Gardeners and Geo Growers are just a few of the local organizations Haeg and Arthouse have collaborated with on developing workshops. A free brochure outlining how to make your own edible garden — printed on recycled paper, of course — is available for exhibit visitors. Anyone who would like to add a picture of their own garden of edibles to a giant map of Austin that's been painted on an Arthouse gallery wall is invited to do so.

And after Haeg plants the South Austin vegetable garden from March 14-16, it will belong solely to the Sierra Ridge residents for them to care for and harvest for food.

"I want to be using my skills as an architect to do things that are more about life than objects or buildings," Haeg said. "Really, anyone can (plant an edible garden) and have a monumental impact."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699