29 Jan
Plains Art Museum: Defiant Gardens

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Defiant Garden Projects archive

Defiant Gardens is an ongoing project working with artists, landscape historians, landscape architects, writers, curators and city planners to develop public art projects that inspire the community.

Winter Wonderland: A Defiant Garden by Stevie Famulari, with other juried artists

(Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled due to a lack of snow.)

Ice Festival on Friday, February 3, just outside the Memorial Student Union at North Dakota State University. You’ll see giant snow sculptures built by local teams-and one international team-that go far beyond the typical snowman or snow fort. The eight snow sculptures will create a magical Winter Wonderland, lit by luminarias for the Fire and Ice Festival on Friday, February 3, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. Grab a cup of hot cider or cocoa, enjoy a bonfire, and marvel at these glowing, large-scale creations.

Plains Art Museum: Defiant GardensWinter Wonderland is Stevie Famulari’s proposal in the Museum’s ongoing public art series, Defiant Gardens for Fargo-Moorhead. A multisensory artist and assistant professor of landscape architecture at NDSU, Famulari decided to create a participatory art project that would defy the isolation of winter and give our community a reason to get together outside around art and fun. Having created snow sculptures for Winnipeg’s Festival du Voyageurs, Famulari developed Winter Wonderland as a snow sculpture competition, working in collaboration with Esther Hockett at the Memorial Union Gallery at NDSU.

A jury selected eight project proposals from the 16 entries. The judges were NDSU professors David Swenson (art) and Regin Schwaen (architecture), PAM director Colleen Sheehy, and two snow sculpture veterans from Winnipeg, Gary Tessier and Madeleine Vrignon. The project proposals will be on display at the Museum January 23 – February 5.

Proposals were judged on originality, form, context, spatial dimensions, use of medium of snow, and feasibility of construction. First place was awarded to the team of Darius Montazemi, Kelsi Mueller, and Nathan Stottler for Tradition Fails; second place goes to Drew Holmgren, Collin Johnson, and Tali Johnson for Lucent Gale.

Co-sponsored by Plains Art Museum

Read the latest… 

29 Jan
Defiant Gardens Blog, Jefferson County, Ohio

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Defiant Garden Projects archive

A Blog detailing the 4-H Defiant Gardens program.

The concept of Defiant Gardens is based on the book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime by Kenneth Helphand

Ohio Street School Planting, Jefferson CountyMonday, June 22, 2009

Ohio Street School Planting - Jefferson County

Despite the overcast skies and the threat of rain, Mrs. Eldridge’s 4th Grade class joined 4-H Program Educator Karen Soule and Community Educator Jeremiah Maxon on Friday, June 19, in the garden at Ohio Street School in Watertown, NY

The students helped the educators plant two community beds with Roma, Big Boy and Cherry Tomatoes, Sweet Bell and Jalapeño Peppers and Cucumbers plants provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension Association of Jefferson County, as well as lettuce, carrots and green bean seeds donated to the program by a 4-H volunteer.

The garden will be tended by neighborhood families, school faculty and students who will be attending Summer School through the month of July.

Posted by Jeremiah Maxon at 9:24 AM

Read more…

29 Jan
DUAL SITE: A Psychogeographic Dinner Theater

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Defiant Garden Projects archive

From Whitney Art Works, Portland Maine

DUAL SITE: A Psychogeographic Dinner Theater - image 1Part two of a long-term nomadic-dinner-theatre. Our first experiment, Blue Hammer, resulted in sold-out shows, with dinner served to 180 audience members, and the formation of an emergent network of Maine artists, farmers, designers, architects, technicians, students, and writers.

For the entire month of January 2010, 6 performances, our company of actors chefs, designers, media technicians will be in residency at Whitney Art Works. We will be presenting a premiere performance, DUAL SITE, featuring two actors in acts of reclamation and recollection: Paris, 1850, excerpts from the Journals of the Goncourt Brothers – Russia, 1929, two men seek answers in a doll store, just under the heel of Stalinist annihilation, adapted from a short play by A.A. Amal’rik – Warsaw, 1944, the last two gardeners, in the last Jewish garden in the Ghetto – drawn from the book DEFIANT GARDENS by Kenneth Helphand. Each night, between sequences, a three-course dinner will be served to the 10 members of the audience in custom produced porcelain bowls, in collaboration with Maine chefs, bakers and farmers. Throughout the run of the show, we will operate a graphic-arts production workshop in the gallery issuing press-releases, posters, pamphlets, recipes and contemporary propaganda. The gallery will, in addition, function during the day as a showroom for a range of design prototypes.

This production will feature furniture prototypes from Jamie Johnston, and limited edition letterpress by Megan O’Connell. Cook Leon Johnson will feature produce and supplies from local farms. The production also includes new sonic compositions from Joey Bargsten and Justin Taylor, with video by Rapahel DiLuzio. Defiant Gardens Tree sculpture by Carol Emily Brower.

Starring Peter Brown + Dennis St. Pierre. Dramaturgy, Laura Chakravarty Box. Costumes by Jessica George and clothing donated by Rogues Gallery. Tintype Photography + Selected Ephemera by Cole Caswell.”

Performances begin at 6 pm. Pay-up-front-reservations - $45.00. Audience limited to 10 per night.

Please contact the gallery for details and reservations 207.780.0700

25 Jan
Landscapes for Healing: Resources for Veterans

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Veterans archive

“More and more research has been coming out about gardening, exposure to nature in a safe setting, and horticultural therapy as effective tools for fighting posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other stress-related problems. Here are some resources.” From the website HealingLandscapes.org.

25 Jan
We’ve Got To Get Ourselves Back to the Garden, say the poets

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Veterans archive

Listen to Dr. Barbara Mossberg as she “consider[s] the relationship between gardening and poetry from earliest times, as poets wipe soil from their hands to pen their thoughts on the inextricable connections between the act of creating and co-creating Truth and Beauty out of earthly experience, between what is sown and grown and pruned and tended, between mortal and immortal beauty… and we’ll hear about a book called Defiant Gardens by Kenny Helphand.”