The Art of Domestic Microfarming

A small farm­stand will serve as a space for the har­vest and sale of micro­greens, and gallery vis­i­tors will deter­mine the mon­e­tary value of the exchange, based on a set of choices that will sup­port local urban-agriculture non­profit orga­ni­za­tions. They may then choose to take the greens or donate them to some­one in need.

Each trans­ac­tion will be recorded in the form of a receipt—an illus­trated print signed by both the par­tic­i­pant and the artist. The par­tic­i­pant keeps the receipt, and a dupli­cate will be hung in the gallery to record the col­lec­tive value of the exchanges over the course of the exhibition.

“One aspect of the exhibit is to show peo­ple who may not nor­mally think about where their food comes from that they could eas­ily grow more of their own food at home,” Spevack said. “It also makes peo­ple con­sider the poten­tial impacts of hav­ing our food shipped in across the coun­try and deliv­ered to us through big supermarkets.

“The under­ly­ing mes­sage has to do with value. The par­tic­i­pa­tory part of the exhibit is peo­ple come to the gallery and have the choice to buy an ounce of greens. In doing so, they look at whether they’d like to take the greens with them or leave them to be donated to a food pantry. The other choice they make is how they want dona­tions of these greens to be dis­trib­uted. My hope is that peo­ple will think about added value: what they buy might actu­ally help other peo­ple in the com­mu­nity to live bet­ter or health­ier lives. So it’s an art and social exper­i­ment at the
same time.”

Each of the objects in the exhibit also con­tains an embed­ded jewel—the sig­nif­i­cance of which is quite inter­est­ing. “There is a theme in the exhibit that has to do with a fable titled `The Cock and the Jewel,’” Spevack related. “It’s an Aesop’s fable about rel­a­tive value. The story goes that there’s a rooster and he’s scratch­ing on a hill, look­ing for food for his fam­ily. He unearths a jewel and real­izes that it is a valu­able thing—but it’s of lit­tle value to him because he can’t feed his fam­ily with it. I weave this story through the art­work in the exhi­bi­tion; each object has a lit­tle jewel embed­ded in it, and there are ref­er­ences to roost­ers and hens to empha­size that there is more value to grow­ing food than we might realize.”

Spevack’s artis­tic work pre­vi­ously focused on the many issues fac­ing humankind’s sur­vival. “In the past, my work has cen­tered on the ten­u­ous rela­tion­ships between human­ity and the nat­ural world,” said Spevack. “The work that I did—mostly drawings—examined the con­se­quences of overuse of nat­ural resources, cli­mate change, and igno­rance of the nat­ural web of life, and had a less pos­i­tive outlook.”

Not long ago, her approach changed. “I’m try­ing to make my work now about cre­at­ing more resiliency in the human nat­ural world,” Spevack con­tin­ued. “After I com­pleted a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in per­ma­cul­ture design, I was think­ing it would be nice to spend more time doing the things that I really enjoy and try­ing to work those into my art. I enjoy being out­side, being in nature, grow­ing food and par­tic­i­pat­ing in that world. This par­tic­u­lar project—and a few before this one—aims toward a more pos­i­tive out­look of ‘How can we improve the state of things?’ rather than the more apoc­a­lyp­tic look.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

Even prior to the open­ing of 8 Extraordinary Greens, Spevack has been praised. “We’ve been get­ting tons of pos­i­tive response,” Spevack con­cluded. “There’s been some great press, and a lot of peo­ple have become really inter­ested. People are fascinated—especially in New York City where you really have no space—by the idea that you could actu­ally grow your own food, and that it could be quite sim­ple for the aver­age person.”

For more infor­ma­tion on Jenna Spevack and her other works, and to see the dates and loca­tion of her exhi­bi­tion, visit www.jennaspevack.com.