September 2009

Mission Greenbelt Project: Building New Gardens

The Mission Greenbelt Project is an ongoing public artwork inspired by the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit made available in 2006. The Mission Greenbelt Project encourages landowners to replace portions of the sidewalk concrete adjacent to their properties with gardens containing native and other drought-tolerant plants that create habitat and forage for resident and migrating birds, bees and butterflies. The original Mission Greenbelt route was selected to connect Mission District parks, sidewalk gardens, vacant lots, and backyards between Dolores Park (19th & Dolores) and Franklin Square Park (16th & Bryant).

The Project cultivates public participation through volunteer opportunities including garden building and maintenance, architectural design and artistic participation via music and/or performance art. Just as important, replacing concrete with garden soil creates a permeable membrane through which rainwater passes and absorbs into the soil, to recharge San Francisco’s underground water supplies, and relieve the overburdened water treatment system. The Project also aims to efficiently leverage the resources available through San Francisco’s governmental and non-governmental agencies via donated plants, educational opportunities, landscaping materials, transportation and other services & publicity.

The Mission Greenbelt Project works with landscape architect / artist Lauri Twitchell of UC Berkeley Blake Garden and Deepa Preeti Natarajan of UC Berkeley Botanical Garden to design sidewalk gardens. We are working on sidewalk garden kits with plant selections for Mission Greenbelt sidewalk gardens. Our kits include: a ‘Garden for Birds’ a ‘Bee Garden’ a ‘Butterfly Garden’ a ‘Garden for Shade’ a ‘Grassland Garden’ and a ‘Dry Rock Garden.’

With this proposal, the Mission Greenbelt Project plans to expand the first garden that was built at Mission Playground Pool in May 2008 with a sidewalk garden nearby at (3523-25 19th Street / 3517-3519-3521 19th Street) with Ivan Abeshaus as the main contact person. This will be a ‘Garden for Shade’ designed for heavy foot traffic. The sidewalk will be left wide, and the planted beds will be protected with heavy iron or brick fencing. The Mission Greenbelt Project is working with Ivan (15 yr. resident) and his neighbors to design a garden that fits the needs of the residents and existing / potential wildlife at this location.

The Project plans to expand bird and butterfly habitat nearby Bernal Hill with Nina Rosenberg (3235 Folsom) and Saul Rosenfield (128-130 Precita). At 3235 Folsom, we will install a ‘Garden for Shade’ for underneath the 35’ tall Chinese Elms. This garden will expand bird habitat down from Bernal Hill by attracting birds with fruiting California wild grapes and strawberries. This garden design includes permeable materials for additional water absorption: decomposed granite near the curb and permeable paving ‘Turfstone’ near the entry and garage. At 128-130 Precita, Saul has designed ‘Grassland Garden’ that will attract butterflies and birds with ceanothus, sticky monkey flower, native bunch grasses and douglas iris. The tree at 128-130 Precita, a Maytens boaria, has begun to lift the surrounding concrete.

This proposal also includes designs for a windy, sunny and dry corridor along 26th & Fair Oaks in Noe Valley. Here, the Mission Greenbelt Project is working with Elizabeth Quinn (3737-3739 26th) on a ‘Butterfly Garden’ that will extend to two neighboring properties (496-498 Fair Oaks / 3735 26th) at the intersection. At 3737-3739 Fair Oaks, we will work with preschool age children and their parents to complete a mosaic cement bench, and we will build a wall protecting the gardens by layering reserved sidewalk concrete with mortar.

The long-term goal of the Mission Greenbelt Project is to continue to be flexible about where gardens are built, while at the same time working to connect and expand upon existing parks, vacant lots and front & back yards.

The Project looks forward to building new sidewalk gardens at locations where residents receive a citation to repair the sidewalks. The Project plans to use some of the funding to work with Nina Rosenberg (3235 Folsom) to design and with Steven Leiber (longtime associate) to print community outreach door tags that notify residents that building Mission Greenbelt gardens is an alternative to replacing aging concrete or concrete that tree roots have uplifted.

Additionally, a portion of the funds from the Community Challenge Grant will be used to purchase new plants volunteers can add to existing Mission Greenbelt gardens located at Sangati Center (22nd & Shotwell), Mission Branch Children’s Library (24th & Bartlett - raised garden bed project currently in progress) and at Mission Playground Pool (19th & Linda).

The Mission Greenbelt Project will also use a portion of the funds to make ten bronze plaques, which will be installed permanently in all new and existing gardens. The plaques will include simple text and design that will briefly explain the project and make mention of key project partners and collaborators.

To keep momentum, the project will work with volunteer event planner Katherine Scherbel to organize a ‘Garden for Bees’ fundraiser that will raise funds to install a garden in the rainy season of 2010 in partnership with Pirate Cat Radio (21st & Florida).

The Mission Greenbelt Project does not work alone and wishes to acknowledge the following groups and individuals: Lauri Twitchell and Peter Suchecki, PlantSF, Mission Roots, Sangati Center, Guerrero Street Greening, Livable City and the San Francisco Department of Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry, who are working together to transform the city by replacing cement with gardens. This project receives support from hundreds of volunteers, Nature in the City and Sunset Scavenger Co.

Project Maintenance Plan

For each of the four new segments of the Mission Greenbelt established, the Mission Greenbelt Project will coordinate one to three garden maintenance days, where volunteers living near the gardens can join in the maintenance activities. These maintenance days will double as workshops to focus on creative reuse of materials, problem solving in public spaces, bird & insect relationships in the garden as well as seasonal garden care.

The Mission Greenbelt Project will also organize three volunteer work days to add new plants and repair fencing etc … in the already established Mission Greenbelt gardens at Sangati Center, Mission Branch Children’s Library and at Mission Playground Pool.

Thereafter, the gardens will be maintained by nearby residents with additional help as needed from the Mission Greenbelt Project.




July 2009

CARNATIC GARDEN CONCERTS

1. Describe your current work as an artist. Please elaborate on any significant artistic activities, awards or accomplishments, as well as any relevant community involvement or regional leadership in the arts. (Max 600 words)

My current work, the Mission Greenbelt Project is building an urban earth artwork of public sidewalk gardens in San Francisco’s Mission District. Each Mission Greenbelt garden is designed with urban ecology in mind: native and other drought-tolerant plants attract urban birds, butterflies and bees. Permeable garden soil replaces sidewalk concrete and absorbs rainwater, relieving the city’s overburdened water and sewage treatment system, which regularly overflows, spilling raw sewage into the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The Mission Greenbelt route will eventually connect the parks, open spaces and existing sidewalk gardens in the Mission District between Dolores Park (19th & Dolores) and Franklin Square Park (16th & Bryant).

In January 2009, Mission Greenbelt and the Sangati Center teamed up to create a sidewalk garden of native plants on the corner of 22^nd and Shotwell Streets. Planted according to a landscape design called ‘Garden for the Birds’, the garden features drought-tolerant plants with flowers, seeds, berries and insects that attract birds.

The Mission Greenbelt Project with support from the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery in fall 2007 mounted a public awareness campaign about San Francisco’s ecology and the city’s Sidewalk Landscaping Permit process. ‘Mission Greenbelt Campaign Headquarters’ included multimedia artworks in the gallery; a temporary native plant demonstration garden was installed in the gallery’s front lawn. There were also performances, guest lecturers, meetings and regularly scheduled tours of the selected Mission Greenbelt route.

Since moving to San Francisco in 2002, I have made participatory artworks that draw public attention to nature through conceptual and performance art projects. In 2004, I invited friends and passersby to join me to hold vigil from sunrise until sunset. This project, ‘I STAND’ was held at 5th and Market Streets in downtown San Francisco. In 2005, I organized ‘ART on BART: an Artist-guided tour of the Bay Area Urban Ecosystem’. I invited artists to create pieces to be performed, read aloud and/or created as we toured the entire BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system. In 2006, I organized another daylong artwork: the ‘Angel Island Art & Ecology Festival’. For this, I invited dancers, botanical illustrators, island docents, multimedia artists, photographers and others to participate in a tour of performances that took place at locations around the perimeter of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

2. Describe the project for which you are seeking funding. Be as specific as possible by identifying the collaborators, resources and timeline required to implement your proposed project. Attach bios for key project collaborators below, as applicable. (Max 1200 words)

I am seeking funding for the Mission Greenbelt Project's contribution to ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts', a series of four outdoor concerts produced concurrently with the creation of new Mission Greenbelt sidewalk gardens. This is a collaborative project between Gautam Tejas Ganeshan of Sangati Center, San Francisco’s Indian Classical Music Art House, Anantha R. Krishnan, accomplished mridangam drummer and myself with the Mission Greenbelt Project.

Our project ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’, seeks to revive the South Indian classical Carnatic musical tradition with its origins in the16th century and encourage the establishment of present day Mission Greenbelt sidewalk gardens. Carnatic music incorporates simple instruments and song into a succession of increasingly complex movements, each with nested variations. Carnatic music was often improvised on-site in response to social issues, as a celebration or story of place or to play to the divine. The ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’ will create a similar kind of complex divinity through a combination of Anantha’s contemporary Carnatic compositions, Sangati Center’s vision and the Mission Greenbelt Project’s facilitation of garden building and ongoing care.

Gautam has sought funding for this project from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Creative Work Fund. We plan to carry out this project in the fall of 2010. The funds will be used promote the ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’, to pay Anantha’s artist fee, to subsidize the costs of building new sidewalk gardens and to pay for city street closure and sidewalk landscaping permits.

If this proposal is funded, I will use $5,000 as my artist’s fee to focus on designing new gardens and generating new artwork related to the gardens. In the past I have made collages on board, multimedia gallery installations, street posters and performance artworks related to the Mission Greenbelt Project. The remaining $5,000 will be used to subsidize costs associated with building new sidewalk gardens. Following is a list of the costs that accrued to build the Mission Greenbelt ‘Garden for the Birds’ at Sangati Center.

·      Permits at $185 each, for two neighboring properties: $370

·      Concrete cutting (discounted price from Habitat Potential): $600

·      Debris container (donated by Sunset Scavenger Co.): $1,060

·      Soil (donated by Broadmore Landscape Supply): $57

·      Plants (discounted price from UC Botanical Garden): $432

·      Miscellaneous supplies and protective fencing: $110

Included, in our last proposal was a letter from James DeVinny, sidewalk garden permit inspector for San Francisco Department of Public Works, Bureau of Urban Forestry. James lives along the selected Mission Greenbelt route, and he has agreed to lend the sidewalk in front of his home as one location for the ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’. We have also identified other willing participants nearby Sangati Center and/or along the proposed Mission Greenbelt route.

My contribution to this project will be to meet with these residents and/or business owners, work with them and my team of landscape architects and naturalists to create sidewalk garden site drawings and work with Gautam and Anantha to set dates appropriate for the ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts.’ I will facilitate the installation of these new gardens from removing concrete to amending soil and coordinating deliveries to planting native and other drought-tolerant plants and from coordinating community volunteer efforts to planning for ongoing garden maintenance.

3. Explain how your artistic innovation project is “pushing the envelope” for you or your artistic work process, and how it will enhance your work as an artist in the future. Describe the artistic risks you foresee if any. (Max 600 words).

If we receive the funding for ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’ Gautam, Anantha and myself will challenge ourselves to build this project with four concerts in quick succession. The concerts will serve to motivate my process of designing gardens, working with the city through permitting procedures and building the gardens. Held on planting day of each garden’s installation, the concerts will both reinforce the real physical labor and the concert will create a symbolic gesture that alludes to a possible future with public gardens integrated into the urban landscape.

As each new garden is built, the enduring Mission Greenbelt Project becomes more tangible, and the long-term goal of creating a continuous living artwork of sidewalk gardens becomes actualized. These gardens are designed to create food and habitat for urban bees, birds and butterflies, and in place of sidewalk concrete, the gardens also absorb rainwater into the soil.

Also central to ‘Carnatic Urban Garden Concerts’ is our goal to engage our various communities. Whether culture, neighborhood, field of study, economic status or occupation delineate them, we hope to generate a shared affinity for music along with the physicality of working in these public gardens.

I leave you with this: in his artists statement, Anantha writes, “our project lends the specific new aesthetic paradigm of regenerative growth, taken from the biology of plants and ecosystems – that a rhythmic movement on mridangam grow with an inherent, organic logic – that it first establish itself in the mind of a listener like a seed, and remain aesthetically continuous as it progresses.”



March 2009

5000 SEEDS

Concept:

I propose a temporary demonstration garden planted with a selection of the most abundant, naturally occurring plants gathered from public Girona locations and transplanted to the Claustre St. Domenec lawn, or other location that can be planted. The plants will be gathered from medians, untended park areas and vacant lots. The temporary garden will be designed in a spiral form representing a carbon dioxide sink; carbon dioxide sinks absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The garden will be organized by the plant size and height with the smallest plants at the perimeter and the largest in the center. Walking paths of undisturbed lawn will radiate from the outside inward.

5000 Seeds explores the idea that gardens of fast-growing, abundant plants could act as sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (1). Plants process CO2 into a usable food product through photosynthesis. The CO2 is then stored in plants and soil until they decay, burn, or until the soil is tilled; these processes release CO2 back into the atmosphere. The earth’s rising temperatures caused by CO2 emissions and high concentrations of nitrogen in soil from crop fertilizer and acid rain pollution can stimulate the growth of particular plant species. Other plants have deep taproots that add structure and permeability to degraded soils. Some roots also bring water to the surface and can restore soil fertility by fixing nitrogen (2). Some plants are prolific, generating as many as 5000 seeds per plant in a season (3). In their adaptability, some plants are more responsive to environmental stress than old-growth forests, food crops and/or native plants.

This proposal gives me an opportunity to investigate the ecological value of plants that are often overlooked, mowed, tilled or pulled. We may come to view these plants in untended spaces as natural carbon dioxide reservoirs carrying out invaluable ecological functions.

Description:

Prior to my visit, I will work with University of Girona students to identify plants common in Girona’s public places. I will ask the students to map nearby locations where we can collect 100 to 150 plants for the demonstration garden. Either before I arrive or upon my arrival, we will borrow or purchase 50 variously sized pots, 20 pairs of garden gloves, 10 to 15 shovels, hand trowels, rakes and three garden carts for transporting the plants.

For the installation, I will need the help of 15 to 20 students. I will demonstrate the best way to transplant, so as not to damage plant leaves, stems or roots through the process. Teams of three or four people will collect plants from previously mapped Girona locations and transport them to Claustre St. Domenec. Concurrently, another team following our design plan will carefully remove grass and soil cores from the lawn, placing them aside in an organized manner, as they will be replanted. The installation will take two or three days to complete.

After the exhibition, students will remove and compost the plants. Composting retains carbon dioxide by adding it back into the soil. Cores of grass and soil will be replaced into the lawn. I have done this before in a San Francisco public plaza, and the grass grew back naturally. The borrowed supplies will be returned and the purchased supplies will be donated to the University of Girona or a nearby community garden.

Other documentation:

My ongoing Mission Greenbelt Project is working with San Francisco residents and collaborating artists and designers to build ecologically functional gardens in place of sidewalk. Designs for the gardens – grassland, rock gardens, gardens that provide food and habitat for wildlife: bees, birds and butterflies – beautify public urban space, sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and allow rainwater to flow into the soil replenishing underground aquifers and relieving San Francisco’s overburdened water treatment system. Since this project’s beginning in 2007, I have been learning about the ecological value of native plants and animals. This work gives me an opportunity to explore the ecological benefits of non-native plants and ecosystems and question the precept that these plants are foreign invaders, threatening native habitats, and they should be destroyed.

My musings during the proposal stage of this artwork have presented me with new thoughts and ideas about how to adapt the Mission Greenbelt Project. For example, what if it were city policy to use vacant lots as carbon dioxide sequestering reservoirs by planting these most adaptive, fast-growing plants?

References:

(1) Plant Physiology of the “Missing” Carbon Sink Christopher B. Field, Plant Physiology, Vol. 125, Stanford, CA. January 2001.

(2) Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience. David I. Theodoropoulos, Avvar Books, Blythe, CA. 2003.

(3) Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Tom Christopher, New York Times Magazine, New York, NY. June 29, 2008.

Budget:

50 variously sized pots: 75 Euro

10 to 15 small shovels, hand trowels and rakes: 170 Euro

20 pairs garden gloves: 50 Euro

3 garden carts: 350 Euro

Estimated total: 645 Euro




September 2008

THE MISSION GREENBELT PROJECT AT JOHN O'CONNELL HIGH SCHOOL

Mission Greenbelt

The Mission Greenbelt Project plans to grow an urban earth artwork of California native and other drought-tolerant plants in sidewalk gardens, planters and on rooftops. This project is part of a San Francisco-based movement to transform the city by taking back the cement and planting gardens.

The proposed route connects Mission District parks and open spaces between Dolores Park (19th & Dolores) and Franklin Square Park (16th & Bryant). The Mission Greenbelt Project intends to educate, inspire and organize city residents to build gardens piece-by-piece to create a healthy urban ecosystem. The native plants in Mission Greenbelt sidewalk gardens are specifically adapted to attract local wildlife. Also the gardens accept rainwater into the soil, relieving the city’s overburdened water treatment system and improving public health. Equally as important, residents must cooperate with each other and with the city to build and maintain these new gardens. 

John O'Connell High School

John O'Connell High School is located at 2355 Folsom between 19th and 20th. The high school's garden, once a public park, is located along Harrison Street, part of the proposed Mission Greenbelt route. John O'Connell High School is a project of the San Francisco Unified School District, City College San Francisco, The Chamber of Commerce, and The Mayors Office. The school’s cross-disciplinary curriculum aims to prepare students for future employment by giving them job skills, self-confidence, and guidance.

Students come from all over San Francisco. Often, they spend time at O'Connell after school, and a few of the faculty stay late and make themselves available to students.

Yearlong Artist Residency

This proposal sets out a yearlong artist residency program, during which Amber Hasselbring will work closely with the student body and staff to make artwork related to the Mission Greenbelt Project. The proposed artist residency programming will compliment what the students are learning in their classes and in their lives.

It will be the responsibility of John O'Connell High School to provide students and staff with the opportunity to develop a partnership with Amber. The possible components of this partnership are flexible, and the ideas contained in this proposal are merely suggestions and possible scenarios.

Amber's key partner at O'Connell is biology teacher Edward Grannis. Through the partnership, she will have the opportunity to form relationships with faculty members in the arts, natural sciences and afterschool programs at O’Connell. Mr. Grannis has introduced Amber to Janet Schulze, O'Connell's Principal, and Richard Duber, the Assistant Principal in charge of Curriculum and Instruction.

The following vignettes–Greenbelt in the Schoolyard, Sidewalk Mural Painting, San Francisco Ecology, Civic Engagement, Building Mission Greenbelt Gardens, and Creating a Bookwork–describe some Mission Greenbelt related artworks that will happen during the residency program.

Greenbelt in the Schoolyard

It’s a school day, and Amber visits Mr. Grannis to discuss the logistics of building an outdoor classroom in the garden at O'Connell High School.

The garden is currently located at the east side of the school's block-wide cement yard, along the proposed Mission Greenbelt route. Mr. Grannis works with students after school one day a week in the garden. Sunchokes, rainbow chard, corn and squash are growing, and native wildflowers bloom through the summer. The garden is fertilized by compost made from cafeteria food scraps, and a regular Sunset Scavenger Company compost delivery.

Mr. Grannis has funding in place to build the outdoor classroom. If this proposal receives funding, Amber will have the opportunity to leverage these funds to make the outdoor classroom into a center for ecological discovery, as well as a seed propagation site, distribution center and anchor for the Mission Greenbelt project.

During the residency, Amber and Mr. Grannis hope to generate excitement about the outdoor classroom. They set a date for a brainstorming session and invite students, their parents and faculty to join in making the outdoor classroom idea a reality.

Amber spreads a large sheet of heavy paper onto a table and brings materials for everyone to make a collage. Amber has drawn a scaled-down template of the garden onto the paper. The participating parents, students, and teachers share their ideas for the outdoor classroom, and the group has cut out shapes and added details to the initial design collage.

The resulting vision is an outdoor classroom with a wide, tall writing board facing a movable set of variously sized benches, arranged in a half-circle. Portions of the classroom are covered for shade. They decide on a date for the classroom to be complete, and members of the group each commit to doing something specific that will help reach the goal. A few months before, Mr. Grannis met Boaz, a builder who lives nearby, who coincidentally, was responsible for building the garden in its original state. BoAz will build the outdoor classroom with help from students in the construction class. He also provides a quote for labor and an itemized budget for materials. A few of the parents volunteer to paint once the structures are built.

Orchard trees will grow on one side of the outdoor classroom and the vegetable beds currently growing on the other side will be enlarged. California native climbing morning glory, western virgin's bower, and California wild grape will grow up the chain link fence along 20th and Harrison. Native plants for future Mission Greenbelt gardens will grow in one of the garden beds. Between the orchard trees there will be chorus tree frog ponds surrounded by tall and short reed grasses, columbine, miner's lettuce, and twinberry. The ponds will help restore San Francisco's dwindling tree frog population.

Dylan Hayes, a gardener with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department’s Natural Areas Program, is consulting with Amber, the students, and Mr. Grannis to build native chorus tree frog ponds as part of the outdoor classroom. Dylan has built a pond in his back yard, and every year, he raises the frogs from eggs collected by San Francisco frog expert, Jim McKissock. Jim collects the eggs after mating season from locations throughout the Bay Area. Then he distributes them to people like Dylan, and hopefully Mr. Grannis' students, who safely raise the tadpoles until they are almost fully grown. Jim then catches and redistributes the frogletts to San Francisco's wetlands.

Mr. Duber, O'Connell's Assistant Principal, envisions removing portions of the cement schoolyard to plant trees. During the residency, Amber will work with Friends of the Urban Forest, a powerful local group that has done this in other San Francisco schoolyards.

With help from the team at Friends of the Urban Forest, Amber arranges to have portions of the concrete yard cut and removed to make space for planting Mission Greenbelt coast live oak trees. The oaks will provide habitat for urban wildlife and will shade O'Connell's playing fields. Once Sunset Scavenger Company has hauled the concrete away, the students help break apart the hard, newly day-lighted soil, adding fresh, fertile soil to make it ready for planting. We plant oak seedlings that Amber has been raising in her back yard.

Because the newly planted schoolyard needs care, Mr. Duber writes a service learning element into the curriculum. Outgoing seniors teach incoming freshman how much to water the plants and trees, how to prune and encourage new growth, when and how to add compost and fertilize to the soil, and how to determine which plants are weeds that need to be removed. The freshmen also learn how to bolster the gardens with fresh plants early in the winter before the heavy rains.

Through this work, the students learn that they are valuable assets to productive ecosystems, and that their efforts in the outdoor classroom create a healthier environment for the school and the surrounding neighborhood.

Sidewalk Mural Painting

During two workshops, artist Tim Armstrong shares his flour sidewalk mural painting technique with O'Connell High School students. First, he pours a small pile of flour onto the sidewalk and spreads it around with used vacuum attachments and old rubber kickballs he has cut in half. He then sprays the flour design with water to make the paste stick to the cement. To finish, he sweeps away the excess and uses a leaf blower to reveal the sidewalk design in white paste on grey cement. Students then make their own murals. When we finish, we have painted the whole cement yard.

Tim, Amber, and the students who have been trained in the earlier workshops, meet at 5 a.m., and wait for 100 guerilla sidewalk painters to arrive in Dolores Park. We distribute cardboard fans, backpacks full of white flour, brooms, and water sprayers. For the next two hours, the group paints the entire Mission Greenbelt route onto the sidewalks.

Before moving on, the group hangs door tags, printed in both English and Spanish, beside the murals. The tags inform residents about the murals on the sidewalks and the basics of how to build sidewalk gardens. The tags include contact information for residents who want to become a part of the Mission Greenbelt Project.

San Francisco Ecology

Amber, primarily an artist and educator, helps students to investigate the urban environment.

Amber and colleagues from UC Berkeley's Botanical and Blake Gardens worked previously to design Mission Greenbelt native plant garden kits for birds, butterflies, bees, a grassland garden, one for shady streets, a dry rock garden and one resembling a traditional Victorian garden.

In July and August, when the native plants went to seed, Amber and other naturalists collected seed sustainably, being careful not to rob the natural areas of precious resources. She collected from plants to supply the garden kits. She received donated seeds for some of the plants she was not able to collect, and the rest she purchased from local seed companies and native plant nurseries.

In September, at the beginning of the school year, Amber and the students plant the seeds in starter pots, watering them twice a day throughout the dry September and October heat. The students watch the sprouts grow into plants as products of their careful labor. They learn the patient excitement of a gardener. Plants will be large enough for Mission Greenbelt sidewalk gardens by next fall. Some of the students are frustrated by the need for instant gratification, but through this process, they are learning the patience necessary for long-term thinking.

Amber often treats the students to observational field trips in urban nature. The group ventures into alleyways, eavesdrops on conversations coming from overhead windows, and stops to hear birds chatter in trees that dot the sidewalks. Amber brings along her hand-held recorder to produce a sonic collage.

Part of Amber's residency is devoted to helping the students understand San Francisco ecology. Through her work with Nature in the City, she has come in contact with a network of committed and knowledgeable urban naturalists, some of whom are listed below.

Josiah Clark is a local ecologist. Amber arranges for him to give a school wide talk and teach two hands-on workshops. During the talk, Josiah speaks about how development in San Francisco has forced wildlife onto isolated islands, usually the hilltops, in a sea of urbanization. He highlights the importance of connecting these hilltops and open spaces to one another with densely planted natural corridors that encourage birds, butterflies and bees to crossbreed, thus assuring their survival. The Mission Greenbelt Project borrows this concept and adds in the invaluable human community.

Amber and O'Connell students meet Liam O'Brien, an artist and San Francisco butterfly expert, in Franklin Square Park to conduct a butterfly survey along the Mission Greenbelt. The group walks with Liam while he describes that butterflies have changed their habits to adapt to urban ecosystems and will lay their eggs on common street weeds. They learn that butterflies are daytime creatures, and that humans may have inadvertently planted certain plants to assure their survival, such as passion vine. During the walk, the group counts ten species total.

Civic Engagement

As an artist in residence at O’Connell High School, Amber holds regular afterschool hours, and students are encouraged to participate in her program. Being outside of the limitations of the school day and the standards of the curriculum allows for flexibility. The students contribute to Amber as well. They infuse her artwork by relating their understanding of the neighborhood, some with their immigrant histories, experiences as urban youth, and their plans for the future.

Amber shows the students how to work together to relieve individual pressures. Students develop skills partnership. Amber hires students as paid interns to do some of the administrative work. The student interns scan student artwork, write checks to consultants and naturalists and keep track of the budget. Another student is an excellent translator, so Amber pays her to translate selected text into Spanish.

One of Amber's favorite activities is to write personal mission statements with students. They consider what they can do to improve themselves, their family relationships, the school or San Francisco. How do the existing institutions support or discourage their efforts? The mission statements assess how students feel about their education and their place in life. Are they motivated or disempowered? Do they feel like they have choices?

The group considers the powerful tool of organized groups of people. Students investigate San Francisco examples: Friends of the Urban Forest, One Brick and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, to name a few. During an important SF Sewer System Master Plan Project announcement about overhauling San Francisco's outdated water treatment system, hundreds of students dressed in their finest clothes and went downtown to participate in the meeting. Afterwards, a few of the students were so excited that Amber encouraged them to join the Citizen Advisory Committee. Now, these students attend meetings regularly and contribute their voices to articulate their vision.

Building Mission Greenbelt Gardens

Amber and the students envision building Mission Greenbelt gardens to improve the neighborhood around the school. Sidewalk gardens require partnerships between the landowner and the city of San Francisco, and through this public private partnership, the students learn the fundamentals of city government and the challenges of being a renter.

The group works with interested neighbors through the planning and permitting process. Weather permitting, Amber holds Mission Greenbelt sidewalk garden meetings outside, as she prefers to make the process accessible to everyone. The students are always invited, and Mr. Duber has arranged to give them extra service credit if they attend meetings. We draw the gardens with sidewalk chalk, make photographs and ask the neighbors what they know about the soil, light, wind and precipitation conditions. The students take notes, and with what they have learned, they choose site-appropriate Mission Greenbelt garden kits for each location.

During the culminating sidewalk garden planting event, some of the students parents volunteer to help us break the soil with pick axes and prepare it for planting. We have 150 native plants total. Some of the plants are from Nature in the City’s Backyard Nursery Program, and others are from UC Berkeley's Botanical Garden, the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council's Native Plant Nursery/Recycling Center and Bay Natives. A week before, a group of students helped Amber to put up a street poster announcing the planting and inviting participation.

The winter rains have come, the new plants are growing their roots deep into the soil, and the gardens are settling into place.

Creating a Bookwork

Amber and Katherine Renz, a San Francisco freelance writer, have agreed to work during the residency to compile a book project featuring student artwork, field notes and observations, poetry, and Mission Greenbelt wildlife surveys, and event photographs. Katherine is responsible for writing an introduction and transitions between the student writings.

When the content is set, Amber sends it to her colleague and former Maine College of Art classmate, Satoru Nihei, who will design the book. At this time, a small edition of 50 books will be self-published and printed through lulu.com. Each of the contributing students will receive a copy as will all the key residency participants. Later, Amber will send proposal letters and copies of the book to local and national publishers beginning with Ten Speed Press and Heyday Books in Berkeley.

Amber and the students are excited to think about leaving a different legacy behind in San Francisco. The group rejects the shortsightedness of previous generations built on excess production and resource depletion. These students, with Amber's help, are contributing to a new ethos of patient regeneration and self-transformation.

Thank You

This artwork by Amber Hasselbring is supported in part by partnerships with Nature in the City, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Sunset Scavenger Company, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, friends at the UC Berkeley Botanical & Blake Gardens, Liam O'Brien, Mission Roots, Steven Leiber, PlantSF, greenmuseum.org, Betsy Davis, Dylan Hayes, Bay Area Video Coalition, Josiah Clark, Jonathan Weisblatt, Katina Papson, World Savvy, Southern Exposure, Benjamin Emery, Mark Sanchez, Sangati Center and others.




April 2008

MISSION GREENBELT: PLANTING SEEDS AS NAPKINS

During November and December of last year the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery hosted my artwork, Mission Greenbelt Campaign Headquarters. This public awareness campaign had two main objectives. The first was to inform San Francisco residents about the proposed Mission Greenbelt project, an urban earthwork, which aims to inspire and enable San Franciscans to build a continuous strip of sidewalk gardens along a selected route in the Mission District. The second objective was to let residents know about the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit. This newly passed legislation is integral to this project as it allows San Francisco landowners to build sidewalk gardens.

Unfortunately, the Mission Greenbelt Campaign did not reach enough of the people who live and/or work along the proposed Mission Greenbelt. Because these residents are essential participants, I am seeking support from the SOEX garden related project fund to publish 12,000 napkins (price quoted at $393) with a Mission Greenbelt message printed in English and Spanish.

The message will read something like this:

Mission Greenbelt
We have the opportunity to build small parks/gardens in the sidewalks in front of our homes and businesses.
Lets transform the sidewalks into native plant gardens to clean the air and shelter pedestrians from street traffic. Our communities will come together to plan, build and thereafter enjoy these small urban oases. By growing and tending the gardens, we create new natural habitat. Also, the newly exposed soil will collect rainwater that will seep into the soil where it is most needed.

Build a Mission Greenbelt Garden

415.786.4957 amber@art-eco.org

Once the napkins are published, I will contract several Mission District ice-cream cart and taco truck vendors ($100 per vendor) to distribute the napkins along the proposed Mission Greenbelt. This street action will happen over the course of one weekend in May or June 2008.

To carry out this work, I am requesting $693 from the SOEX garden related project fund.

Note: If there is positive response to this street action, I plan to extend this piece by publishing an additional 36,000 napkins (price quoted at $1,285) with another Mission Greenbelt message. I will offer these napkins to restaurants, bars and cafes along the proposed Mission Greenbelt.

January 2008

THE MISSION GREENBELT PROJECT

I am requesting support from the Center for Cultural Innovation to promulgate the Mission Greenbelt project: a proposed urban earthwork of continuous sidewalk gardens in San Francisco’s Mission District.

1. Describe your current work as an artist. Please elaborate on any significant artistic activities, awards or accomplishments, as well as any relevant community involvement or regional leadership in the arts.

Many of my recent artworks have taken the form of daylong events intended to draw attention to the relationships between urban people and the natural environment. I find kinship with artists Joseph Beuys, Ulay & Abramovic, Charlotte Moorman and Jenny Holzer, as well as with some Feminist and Fluxus artists. My event works are created for specific locations and require field research and communication with staff or managers at these locations. Creating these works always includes assembling a team of people, mostly artists and scientists, who are most equipped to help me carry out the projects.

In 2005, I notified the public relations office at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in Oakland, California, of my plans to organize Art on BART: An Artist-guided Tour of the Bay Area Urban Ecosystem. Art on BART was a daylong, guided tour of the 104-mile, 43 station BART system. For the tour, I created a folding, double-sided environmental history map of the BART system and surrounding areas. I also invited artists to create works for Art on BART. Their contributions included short dance pieces, games, readings and photographic documentation of the day’s activities. In addition to organizing and publicizing this event, I outfitted myself as an Environmental Stewardess and encouraged our group and other BART riders to participate in the program.

Art on BART, for the most part was a metropolitan artwork, so in response to it, I created the Angel Island Art & Ecology Festival on the island state park in San Francisco Bay. Participants in this event took the ferry to and from Angel Island. For this festival, I coordinated performances that took place at locations around the perimeter of Angel Island. The event included a map and program that I created with artist Isabelle Le. Outfitted as the Angel Island Art & Ecology Ranger, I lead the large group on a tour of the performances. The festival included a botanical illustration workshop, a biologist who presented his collection of live reptiles, a historian who spoke about the Angel Island Immigration Station, dance pieces by Anna Halprin’s Sea Ranch Collective, a performance about a historic island duel over an escaped slave, readings of prose, temporary sculpture and a tai chi lesson, as well as artworks in the form of printed books and pamphlets. Because the festival happened at locations all over the island, I was required to clearly communicate with the park staff about specific locations and performance details.

Following the Art & Ecology festival, local ecologist Josiah Clark invited me to co-organize an Earth Day celebration in San Francisco’s McLaren Park. Beginning in December 2006 and continuing through Earth Day on April 22nd, I participated in weekly planning meetings with a team of naturalists, activists and educators. For my contribution, I designed the poster and invitation card, created and lead a participatory performance piece and coordinated the day’s artworks. 

Organizing McLaren Park Earth Day inspired my current work, the Mission Greenbelt. The Mission Greenbelt is a proposed urban earthwork that will rely on collaborations with local naturalists, government, organizations and Mission District landowners. The project aims to inspire and enable Mission District residents to build a greenbelt of native plant sidewalk gardens along a selected route in the Mission District. The greenbelt will include existing gardens, new sidewalk gardens, potted planters and windowsill gardens. Building the greenbelt will strengthen and educate communities and improve urban ecology. A diverse selection of native plants will attract urban wildlife. Additionally, garden soil will collect and filter rainwater. Presently during heavy rains, storm drains collect rainwater into the city’s combined water treatment system, and sewage overflows into the bay.

Late last year, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery selected my proposal to transform their space into Mission Greenbelt Campaign Headquarters. As proposed, I mounted a public awareness campaign to inform and educate San Francisco residents about the Mission Greenbelt project and the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit process. The Sidewalk Landscaping Permit is legislation passed in 2006 that allows landowners to replace sections of sidewalk with gardens. Additionally, to equip the Headquarters, I created a new body of artwork, which included a five-part mixed-media collage that illustrates the sidewalk landscape permit process, a jigsaw puzzle map of the greenbelt as well as a multimedia urban ecology sound tour installation.

Events at Campaign Headquarters included a campaign kick-off with special guest speakers, a Sidewalk Landscaping & Permitting workshop and a day where volunteers helped to plan and install a native plant demonstration garden. Every Saturday in December there were tours of the proposed Mission Greenbelt. The tours included a youth bus tour, a planning tour with sidewalk chalk, a bicycle tour and a soundscape tour. These tours gave us an opportunity to distribute Mission Greenbelt information. We put up posters, talked with people about the project and gave letters to local residents. I also worked to develop a How to Build a Sidewalk Garden lesson plan for Mission District schools. All of these events were made possible through collaborations with the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the San Francisco Arts Commission Arts & Education Program, other San Francisco government agencies, and with local artists, scientists, activists and volunteers.

2. Describe how you currently present or market your work, and include a statement on how you hope to expand your audiences and/or distribution of your work.

Currently, my website art-eco.org serves as an archive for collecting and documenting my work, and the design and content are self-created. Most of my recent work is time-based and ephemeral, thus they require audience participation. However, artworks related to specific projects are available for sale through my website, and my work has been shown in alternative and publicly funded art spaces. At this point, I am not represented by a gallery or dealer. However, curators at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure and the Sonoma County Museum have recently approached me about my work for possible inclusion in group shows.

During all stages of the Mission Greenbelt project, information about exhibitions, workshops and tours was disseminated through invitation cards, street posters, flyers, letters, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery web announcements and personal email invitations. Mission Greenbelt information was also posted on the Hidden Histories web blog, at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s website and at my website.

Unfortunately, a large number of residents living along the proposed Mission Greenbelt were not made aware of the project through the campaign. Because their participation is vital to building the greenbelt, my colleague Steven Leiber has helped me to devise a plan for expanding my Mission District audience. The plan will begin with a street action involving Mission District street food vendors, for example, popsicle carts and taco trucks. I will contract with them to distribute information about the Mission Greenbelt that will be printed in Spanish and English on napkins. I plan on expanding this type of distribution by producing a 36,000 of these napkins to give to restaurants throughout the Mission District. The napkins will reach the most important audience: the people living in the Mission District who will be building these sidewalk gardens. From this piece, I will also be creating gallery-ready artwork.

Throughout the project, I am making artworks to educate people about building the Mission Greenbelt, all the while creating video, audio, and photographic records of public workshops, events and plantings. These works will be ready to show in galleries and museums and will help to promote the Mission Greenbelt project locally and in other cities. Also, I am working with artist Jonathan Weisblatt to make Mission Greenbelt Gardener t-shirts and patches to raise money to build sidewalk gardens.

3. Describe the planning project for which you are seeking support, including specific information about the process you will use for increasing the distribution of your work, audiences you hope to reach and consultants or collaborators with whom you wish to work (if any). (You may attach a brief bio for each consultant).

There are three stages of this project: Mission Greenbelt Campaign, Mission Greenbelt Planning & Design and Building Mission Greenbelt Gardens. All of this work will incorporate the skills and services of local residents, organizations and government.

Installing Mission Greenbelt Campaign Headquarters at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery gave me the opportunity to meet people at nearby organizations and in city government. I am working with Alfredo Pedroza with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services to display a five-part mixed-media collage that illustrates the sidewalk landscaping permit process, which I created for the SFAC Gallery exhibition. Together, we are arranging for this piece to rotate among vacant storefronts, community centers and cafes in the Mission District.

With support from the Center for Cultural Innovation, I will connect the Mission Greenbelt to similar projects proposed for and/or happening in the Mission District: Mission Creek Bikeway and Greenbelt, greening San Jose and Guerrero Street, PlantSF’s sidewalk gardens on Shotwell and Harrison Streets and Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens as well as Southern Exposure’s garden program. These collaborations will help me to reach new audiences so we can work together and share our resources. 

For help with the planning and design stage of the project, I will further consult with Suzanne Whelan, Community Outreach Coordinator with Friends of the Urban Forest. I will work from FUF’s model of identifying neighborhood advocates for each section of the greenbelt. Together, we will organize block/intersection planning and design meetings. These meetings will be the geneses for a series of plan drawings, including plant lists, which I will create for each location. These artworks may be exhibited and/or may be used for fund-raising purposes.

Mission Greenbelt gardens will be built with the help of the following local organizations. Individuals from Nature in the City’s Education and Stewardship Committee have been integral to the growth of this project from the beginning. Members of this committee will be consulting on plant selection, volunteer labor and fund raising. Mohammed Nuru, Director of Operations for the Department of Public Works has agreed either to decrease the permit fee of $215 per landowner, or to remove concrete for large segments of the greenbelt. Additionally, Sunset Scavenger has offered to help build sidewalk gardens by hauling away concrete at no cost and providing free compost to amend the soil. 

4. What is the timeline for this project? Please provide specific dates as possible.

Mission Greenbelt artwork was first exhibited in September 2007 as part of Hidden Histories, a group show curated by Joshua Short for CELLspace. From November 10 – December 22, 2007, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery hosted Mission Greenbelt Campaign Headquarters.

Mission Greenbelt planning and design has just begun. During this time, I will work with individuals at residences, businesses and schools to complete the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit process. As soon as possible, I will be collaborating with local street food vendors to distribute Mission Greenbelt napkins printed with information in Spanish and English to reach the audience most impacted by this work. 

In early 2008, I plan to design and build the first native plant gardens at 19th & Linda Streets at Mission Playground Pool. These gardens will be made possible by partnerships with Nature in the City and with the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. Throughout the project, I will get permission to organize plantings in existing vacant lots or neglected plots along the greenbelt.

At the start of the fall school year in 2008, I will make contact with John O’Connell High School for Technology and encourage them to design and build sidewalk gardens adjacent to their school, which borders the proposed greenbelt.

In the fall and winter of 2008 during rainy season, which is the best time to plant, we will begin building Mission Greenbelt gardens. Mission Greenbelt campaigning, planning, design and building gardens will happen in cycles for a total of three years. During this time, I will also be creating performances, events and artworks in furtherance of the project. I will also work to exhibit these artworks and/or documentation of the events and performances.

August 2007

MISSION GREENBELT CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS

I propose transforming the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery into Mission Greenbelt public awareness campaign headquarters. At campaign headquarters, active workstations will be set amongst art exhibits concerning San Francisco’s natural history. Gallery staffers at work on the campaign will invite visitors to help with campaign tasks. Through participation, visitors will be introduced to the 2006 San Francisco legislation, the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit; they will learn about native plants and urban ecology; and they will further efforts towards establishing the Mission Greenbelt, a large-scale urban earthwork.

The Sidewalk Landscaping Permit allows property owners to replace small portions of sidewalks with plant life. This is an opportunity for city residents to radically affect San Francisco’s environment, as each newly planted sidewalk garden will improve urban ecology. Replacing portions of sidewalks with permeable soil will also absorb rainwater otherwise headed for the sewage treatment plant, which, during heavy rains, overflows into the Bay.

I suggest using native plants because they have adapted for thousands of years to San Francisco’s environmental conditions. The Mission Greenbelt project, in its early stages, is a large-scale, community-based urban earthwork that incorporates the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit. The Mission Greenbelt will involve working with Mission District residents to replace sidewalks with native plant life to establish a narrow, connective greenbelt running east west through Mission District neighborhoods from Franklin Square Park to Dolores Park. One segment, running along Harrison Street from 17th to 18th, will be reminiscent of the now landfill-covered Mission Creek, with a stream of vegetation separating pedestrians from cars.

Aspects of the Mission Greenbelt earthwork will be exhibited at Cell Space in September 2007 as part of Hidden Histories, an exhibition of projects that utilize performance, installation and tours related to actual and imagined San Francisco histories. Installed in the gallery will be an informational exhibit with Mission Greenbelt-related research, interviews and photographs. A walking tour of the Mission Greenbelt site will also be part of this exhibition. Volunteers will meet first for a brief training about the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit and the Mission Greenbelt earthwork. Thereafter, the group will walk from Franklin Square Park to Dolores Park, initiating conversations with residents and inviting them to become a part of the project.

During the Winter Workshop at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, visitors will be urged to participate in the artwork by taking on campaign tasks, by sharing their ideas about how to develop the campaign, and/or by volunteering their skills. Daily task sheets, an overall project time-line and a special events calendar will be posted in the gallery to set out campaign goals. Also, visitors may sign up to take part in scheduled tours of the Mission Greenbelt earthwork site.

At campaign headquarters, Mission District residents will be encouraged to take the earthwork into their own hands. A team of volunteers will walk along the Mission Greenbelt personally inviting residents into the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery to participate in a hands-on ‘How to Build a Sidewalk Garden’ workshop. Workshop attendees will have a special opportunity to learn from resident experts and consultants about how to begin the permit process, how to prepare the greenbelt site, and how to select native plant life appropriate for the Mission District.

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, across the street from City Hall, is a fitting location for the Mission Greenbelt headquarters. I will work to make the public awareness campaign fit seamlessly into the civic arena. I plan to approach the San Francisco Department of Public Works to ask someone from their office to be present in the gallery one day a week to assist residents in filling out Sidewalk Landscaping Permits. Also, I will solicit the city of San Francisco for funds to subsidize all or part of the $215 permit fee, citywide, for residents who, during the length of the exhibition, commit to growing and maintaining a sidewalk garden.

Natural history art exhibits will be installed throughout the gallery, highlighting different aspects of San Francisco’s urban ecology. To give the earthwork context, there will be a topographic wall piece. This piece will be constructed of Bay Area aerial imagery, maps isolating the Mission Greenbelt, as well as contemporary and historic photographs of the greenbelt site. In a darkened area of the gallery, a digital projection piece by ecologist Josiah Clark will reveal the biodiversity that is possible if we create more native habitats in San Francisco.

Combinations of native plants will be arranged into living sculptures on the gallery floors. These living sculptures are examples of plant groupings that, if planted outdoors in sidewalk plots, will create mini-ecosystems that increase biodiversity. Native plants are an ideal habitat for local birds, butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, and they are drought tolerant. Native plants will also be for sale during the exhibition courtesy of Greg Gaar of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council.

There will also be a library installation created specifically for the exhibition. Publications will be on loan from the Prelinger Library, Nature in the City, and from the Randall Museum and the libraries of local naturalists and environmental artists. Mission Greenbelt-related research, sketches and project proposals will also be located here.

Additionally, the Mission Greenbelt public awareness campaign will incorporate the ideas of Mission District youth. I will invite the youth to participate in a brainstorming and art making session that will project their environmental needs and ideas for their schools and neighborhoods. Their work will be made in the gallery and installed for the duration of the exhibition. The youth will be associated with World Savvy, an educational organization working to illuminate global issues.

My previous work has often incorporated the skills of others through various collaborations. Largely, those mentioned in this proposal are colleagues who I have worked with in the past, and they are available and supportive of this project. The Winter Workshop will give me the opportunity to amass a team of local naturalists, neighborhood activists, environmental artists and policy-makers. This group will provide the many skills and perspectives it will take to realize the Mission Greenbelt earthwork.

May 2007

ON THE WAY TO A MISSION GREENBELT

Replace an 8’ x 8’ square of sidewalk with native grasses, plants, shrubs and trees as a symbolic first step towards creating a greenbelt in San Francisco’s Mission District.

This public art project is the start of a large-scale urban earthwork that involves replacing sidewalks with native plant life to establish a connective greenbelt between the Mission District’s two largest parks: Franklin Square Park and Dolores Park. The greenbelt will be a narrow landscaped strip running east west through neighborhoods now lacking public green spaces. On the whole, the self-supporting native plants will thrive, as they have evolved for thousands of years to suit San Francisco’s semi-arid climate. Also, the permeable soil will absorb rainwater otherwise headed for the sewage treatment plant, which, during heavy rains, overflows into the Bay. Visually, the greenbelt will be reminiscent of the now landfill-covered Mission Creek with a stream of planted vegetation separating pedestrians from cars.

The artwork will begin with a public awareness campaign of volunteers. The volunteers will walk along the proposed Mission Greenbelt and talk with residents about the Sidewalk Landscaping Permit; legislation passed just last year that allows property owners to replace sidewalks with plant life. The awareness campaign’s aim is to find at least one property owner, who lives along the proposed Mission Greenbelt, interested in providing an 8’ x 8’ plot of sidewalk to replace. Together, the property owner and I will complete the permit process and secure San Francisco Department of Public Works approval. Information concerning the Mission Greenbelt project will be included in Hidden Histories, a group exhibition at Cell Space, curated by the Hypersea collaborative. Hidden Histories will include projects that utilize performance, installation and tours related to actual and imagined San Francisco histories.

Once the permit and plot have been approved, there will be a groundbreaking ceremony, followed by a forum on environmental art and urban ecology at the site. For the forum, I will invite Josiah Clark to speak about the ecology of San Francisco’s open spaces, Ledia Carroll to speak about her research on the history of Mission Lake and Mission Creek, Amy Franceshini to speak about her artwork Victory Gardens, Bonnie Sherk to speak about her artworks The Farm and A Living Library, and Joshua Short to speak about the ideas that inspired Hypersea. I will also invite Neighborhood Public Radio to be present to broadcast the forum on the radio.

The completion of this first segment of greenbelt will inspire residents to take this urban earthwork into their own hands by replacing the adjacent sidewalks. The forum during the groundbreaking will support artists and naturalists by giving them an opportunity to share their work with local residents, who will in turn benefit by being exposed to creative ideas put into action in the city where they live. 

The timeline will follow the seasons with the public awareness campaign scheduled for August 2007, followed by the Hidden Histories Exhibition at Cell Space in September. During the rainy months, I will work with the property owner through the permit process. The groundbreaking and forum will happen in spring, and shortly thereafter, the property owner and myself will prepare the soil, and plant native grasses, plants, shrubs and trees. The first segment of the Mission Greenbelt will establish itself through the summer, and in early fall 2008, I will encourage adjoining neighbors to extend the greenbelt.

This project is an acknowledgement of work completed by Friends of the Urban Forest, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department’s Natural Areas Program, the city of San Francisco, and countless San Francisco residents committed to improving the environment.




March 2006

ARTISTS INTERPRET ECOLOGY ON ANGEL ISLAND

I propose an art event that displaces city dwellers by relocating them to a natural outpost. Working with the natural environment and the history of Angel Island, collaborating artists will develop art actions, which will challenge the urban participants to relearn patterns of group engagement.

Everyone will board the Saturday morning ferry on September 16, 2006. Art actions will begin immediately with artists performing invisible theater aboard the ferry. Levana Saxon, activist and elementary school teacher, will welcome participants at Ayala Cove by using conversational techniques to tease them into dissolving emotional barriers so they may become a dynamic cooperative group. When participants disembark, I will distribute maps / performance schedules noting the sites, times and details of the art actions throughout the day.

Participants will then be assembled into teams, and artist collaborators will lead the teams to sites around the island. Art actions will begin simultaneously at 11:00 AM. Group engagement will be interwoven into each of the art actions. Before the event  everyone will be instructed to prepare a sack lunch for someone else, and at 12:15 PM, they will exchange these lunches with one another.

Throughout the day, participants will become aware of the Angel Island narrative. Chinese immigrants were detained here from 1910 to 1940. These immigrants have carved their poetic record into the immigration buildings’ wooden walls. Katina Papson, a teacher and graduate student, will compile and translate this poetry for the group to read aloud.

Debbie Au will teach Chen Family Taiji at a site on the south side of Angel Island looking towards San Francisco. Au will draw groups inward in self-reflection as she leads them in spiraling, circular, fluid movements that link our bodies to the natural ecosystem through enhanced blood and energy circulation. Keith Terry will stimulate participants with music making that releases the body through percussive chanting, chest drumming, clapping and stomping, the group will create music in layered rounds.

Angel Island State Park has served as a witness to human history as indicated by landmarks found all over the island. For thousands of years the Native American Miwoks lived, worked and played harmoniously in this environment, but in the last few hundred, they have been displaced by disease, the army, quarantine hospitals and detainment centers. I will lead participants on a metaphorical hunt for Angel Island Miwok inhabitance. On Ayala cove, where there was once a quarantine station, Nicole Krauch, educator and performance artist, will dance among groups to transform and purify the site. 

Three photographers and one videographer will be assigned different sections of the island and different art actions to photograph. Documentation will be used in a publication and a webpage to present the event to a larger audience. 

The art event will conclude at 3:20 PM when the last ferry leaves the State Park.

For more information email: amber@art-eco.org
or call and leave a message at 415-786-4957