mobile garden

ABOUT

In September of 2008 the mobile garden idea arose from a graduate seminar class at
the University of Illinois at Chicago addressing sustainability and design. The basic
concept that artist Joe Baldwin came up with is to build a garden on a flatcar train and
to let it travel with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) as part of their regular transit
service. Because of the conditions that would subject plants to the ideal plants for the
mobile garden are native plants that require low water and low maintenance. This also
allows the opportunity to highlight the importance of native plants in the community.

noisivelvet has started forming an informal board and is applying for
501(c)3 non profit status. The board members include: Carrie Menendez, MPA, Research
Assistant, Great Cities Institute, Doctoral Student, College of Urban Planning and
Public Affairs; Molly Meyer, Green Roofing Consultant,
Molly Meyer LLC; Madiem Kawa, organizer of the Smart Garden at the Museum of Science
and Industry, and Environmental Program Organizer at the University of Illinois
Extension. An official proposal has been submitted to the CTA with positive feedback
and is currently in the research phase in the Rail Operations department awaiting to
find out if there are any additional costs or safety requirements. This project is
being completely funded by fundraising efforts.

If you would like to help make this project happen email: chicago.mobilegarden@gmail.com
and or check out the web site: http://www.themobilegarden.org or you can donate directly to:
http://www.giveforward.org/mobilegarden/

Outline Abstract Introduction Mobile garden Native Plants Form & Function Habitat Corridors & Brownfields Seed Dispersal Reaction/Feedback Municipal Art 501(c)(3) Not for Profit Feedback Self, Peers, Committee Professionals (engineers, horticulturists), CTA (organization, workforce) Riders (choice and dependent) • Conclusion awareness is a blooming flower, rising and falling with the light of each day. - Joe Baldwin










Abstract While Chicago is certainly a green city in comparison to many1, there are still other related problems it must face. The mobile garden project addresses brownfields and vacant spaces in the city by using hand made seed cards as a device to inform people on the important urban issues. Stroll around many of the neighborhoods suffering from vacant spaces in Chicago and you’ll see many elements that link the neighborhoods together, one of those is trash and unkept property. Residents of these neighborhoods have more power than they often utilize, and bringing stewardship is not as easy as teaching groups how to make seed cards. Residents need empowerment, and control over their lives, in order to feel like they have equity in their neighborhood. Another device the mobile garden uses is education through teaching the youth about urban agriculture. The famous saying ‘Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever’ is essentially the core of the education portion. All of these devices and ideas get folded into the spectacle, and vehicle, that is the mobile garden installation onto a open-air flat car of public transit. That is, the installation of a native plant garden in conjunction with the transit agency - and the installation of knowledge and empowerment into the communities the transit agency serves. Introduction The mobile garden installation on public transit started by creating a false future 2 I could mentally and chronologically step backward from and figure out the steps to make it a reality. I wanted to do something with transportation and eventually arrived at the idea of a train that carried around a garden. Growing up in a small town, I often had to wait at train crossings and reflected back to my memory of trains stopping traffic - sitting there waiting for train car after train car to go by. I would examine what was on these train cars, often it was fuel, cars, or other freight. So it seemed that lots of commercial things had the power to stop traffic. So, make a garden stop traffic. Transit for arts sake. Along the way of developing the installation part of the project I learned about ideas of invasive plants versus native plants and the idea that some plants don’t responsibly belong everywhere. The next logical examination of the work would be organizational and administrative in nature. Miwon Kwon talks about this shift in site specific works in reference to the work of Athena Tacha, Ned Smyth, Andrea Blum, Siah Armajani, Elyn Zimmerman, and Scott Burton in One Place After Another “Ideally, they would now share responsibilities on equal footing with architects and urban planners in making design decisions about public spaces.” So the work changes into a collaborative work at this very moment, the moment that I start on the path to making it happen. My ownership becomes adjacent to this long history of an artist as a facilitator. Next is the teaching moment, that is using the train and the captive attention to disperse seed cards and urban agricultural information for people to use native plants to remediate brownfields into green spaces and and vacant spaces into habitat corridors. Through this journey I start to develop multiple sources and influences, methods and approaches -- but these all have to be folded back into the foundation of the work so that it feels genuine to me the artist as presented by me the administrator. Genuinity and knowing what I am presenting doesn’t feel contrived personally becomes the most important element of the work. This is difficult when juggling the hats of aesthetics, administration and mediation - where does the art arrive? Where does art happen for the viewer and where does this happen for me 3. In our conversation of representing on-site works in the off-site locations, galleries, and academic critiques the objective is: what residue can I bring to connect the space I am working in to the off-site spaces. So the issues I will tackle will be exactly that - representation in these spaces that are not the site specific space of the work, genuinity of all the working parts, and the immediate trajectory of the project as well as the overall trajectory of all of these combined. The mobile garden Native Plants At first glance the mobile garden is almost ornamentation, but on the second glance and with the device of seed dispersal and other information the project expands into the important and effective uses of native plants in the Chicago area as a way to remediate brownfields, turn vacant spaces into greenspaces, and to overall create habitat corridors, or passageway, throughout the area. Corridors can be composed of many things – from riverbanks to old railroad beds. They can be used just for natural area preservation, or as a conduit for people, providing connections from town to town, and possibly across regions and states. 4 Form & Function Using native plants in the installation becomes more about function, and less about form, though I believe the two are inextricable. Function takes over in the discourse for now. The native plants chosen for the site - a site of high wind and dryness, heavy vibrations, and basically adverse overall - were chosen for their ability to survive there. The best plant for the job also turned out to be the responsible plant for the job. Native plants are a vibrant way to include nature into a work that also offer low to no allergies or reactions, and also require less water and maintenance than invasive and other decorative plants. Habitat Corridors and Brownfields The choice to address habitat corridors also unfolds out of using responsible materials. Brownfields are areas of land that are being set up for remediation. Using native plants can be done more cost effectively, some sources say 1000 more effective - but slower. Seed Dispersal When thinking of how to deliver information and relevant ideas of the mobile garden project to riders and the public again the idea of responsibility comes up, but also the idea of opportunity. The chosen method of dispersing information is hand made seed paper from existing tax documents, and miscellaneous paperwork. Reaction/Feedback The best case scenario is that riders and the public take the handouts and go to their homes and other public spaces and start planting. This opens up new ideas and information to them about native plants, horticulture, and stewardship. After testing, dismissal of the seed card is as much of success as participants taking the seed card home to start a garden. If not one single person uses the handouts the way they were meant to and throws the seed paper to the ground, or in the trash - the seed paper can still survive. 5 Currently this has only been tested in a home greenhouse, as weather gets warmer it will be tested on a street, in a trash can, and other spaces to see if results are across the board. Municipal art To talk about the mobile garden as a work of municipal art--it must first be laid out what is on the table, that is to say what is it that the I, the artist, and Chicago, the municipality, are giving up to one another. It is municipal first of all. If men seek it they seek it not for art’s sake, but for the city’s; they are first citizens and then, in their own way, artists jealous of the city’s looks because they are citizens... they so band themselves together and so commission sculptors, painters, artists, and landscape designers for the glorifying of civic art -- not because it is art, but because it is civic. 6 The first thing I had to give up was myself in a large part. To take on a project with substantial cost, scale and affect - it would have to be municipal art with veritas, or it would have to succeed at being an empty trophy commemorating the powers and riches of the dominant class--a corporate bauble or architectural jewelry. 7 If there is one thing that municipal art in Chicago lacks it is the people whose lives it is meant to enrich. That is to say that the works like the Cloud Gate, the Chicago Picasso, and others present in Chicago holds few voices in the acquisition deciding and construction, while the mobile garden is meant to hold many voices and speak all of the languages. The languages I mean are first obvious languages, actual languages first because the work conjures up discussion in native tongues as the viewers come in contact with the work. The other languages I mean to implicate are the professional ones, the languages of administration, aesthetics, institution, and even the conceptual languages of digital social networks that help generate publicity and promotion. So immediately after being the author of the idea and a handful of iterations of the primary image the work becomes a collaborative process. I would consider this artistic transculturation, in the way that Fernando Ortiz talks about transculturation, between myself and the municipality. I would go as far as to say that this may even reach Ortiz’s fifth stage of transculturation, integration 8 -- where the project becomes a nexus work in that it is no longer a traditional work of that speaks to authorship by the artist and also not a gesture of the dominant class but a third thing. The work becomes a municipal artwork that is a mobile artwork, garden, museum, classroom, and the tertium quid that is all of this and that which is yet to be unfolded. Conceptually, this thing is like a seed, code, a computer program, or sheet music - that has the ability to survive beyond the equipment and technology the bring it to a hyper-realization. This work inadvertently suggests a coterritorialization, past Deleuze & Guattari’s deterritorialization and subsequent reterritorialization, between man and nature in the urban setting. That is a cohesion of acceptance of what the city is, versus what it was - both in terms of power dynamics and bureaucratic structures. Taking elements of pre-city and mixing in elements of the reality that we are here too and as much of a part of nature as anything else. In my opinion many times we tend to de-nature ourselves in reference to nature as is humans were transplanted here and not part of the organic whole. 501(c)(3) The first part of creating a 501(c)(3) to make this a fundable project was identifying the points in my own timeline that already point to a narrative arc in my work. Public work, community betterment, volunteerism, the arts, and nature - all of these were already parts here and parts there in my curriculum vitae. I had done 6 years work as a recreation coordinator, 3 years in the newspaper industry designing, writing and editing, become civic and attended regular city council meetings, started a grassroots political organization, volunteered for many not for profits, started a film festival that benefits after school programs, established a regular student art show award at the college I once attend - so connecting the dots and starting “noisivelvet” was nothing more than logical and imminent. While also giving corporations and foundations the ability to direct funds to projects, I could grow the actions I had already engaged in regularly to serve and help more people and communities. The mission is basically to advocate for artists making public work. In addition to helping artist navigate through institutional dialogue, there will also be a mentoring program. In addition to one award at one school, more awards could be made at more schools. The big picture would be making Christ and Jean Claude like projects that not only are aesthetic, but also create a job market - an organization that would engage in occasional large scale projects that create jobs. The board members for the organization include Carrie Menendez, MPA, Research Assistant, Great Cities Institute, Doctoral Student, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs; Molly Meyer, Green Roofing Consultant, Molly Meyer LLC; and Madiem Kawa, organizer of the Smart Garden at the Museum of Science and Industry, and Environmental Program Organizer at the University of Illinois Extension. This board wasn’t hand picked per say, but the group was definitely vetted due to their individual abilities that enriched the mobile garden project and installation. They all arose out of the same process of creating partnerships and obtaining endorsements. If I had to pick an honorary board it would probably include people that have endorsed or enriched the project along the way through advice or general support: Robert Kelly, President, of The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 - a public transit union representing over 3500 transit workers of the Chicago Transit Authority, Mary Mattingly, Artist of the Waterpod Project, Ben from OneSeed Chicago and at least a few more. Feedback Self, Peers, Committee Feedback is vital on this project - since it is civic public work, I feel that along the way the mobile garden project and installation must take shape of the influences it has passed through. From myself, peers, board, thesis committee, social networks, professionals, the transit agency, riders, to the guy work at the post office that wants to see some red flowers on there - all the voices are important, even the shit-head who tweeted that he wondered how long it would take for it to become a mobile toilet for the homeless (a huge put down to the homeless that they don’t have the ability to censor their actions in public in my opinion). My board, who I described as being vetted for their individual abilities, and other professionals I have utilized and come to understand better the information relating to rooftop gardening, plant choice, and organizational development needed to firmly navigate in this sphere. From the thesis committee I have understood better where the honesty is in the work, the emergent themes that play with each other, and the ability to speak on all angles while keeping my own position. Most importantly, from the transit agency, I have learned how to be patient, in the saintly sense. Also, the realization that the scale of the budget and size of the work is directly proportionate to the amount of time it will take to make it realized. Riders On one level, the community I am making this work for is the riders of the CTA rail. This is a community connected to one another by the specific way in which they interact socially and physically with getting around Chicago. Many ride the rail for work, to visit friends and family, site-seeing, and sporting events. But, there is also the distinction between people who use the rail as a choice, whether to avoid driving in traffic, to save money, or other reasons -- and dependent riders who have no other means to effectively travel in the city. This makes the idea of what constitutes the boundaries of this community difficult. Boundaries then become invisible, or at least very hard to establish, because riders of the CTA rail can be residents of Chicago, residents of the outlying suburbs, and tourists visiting the city. The CTA system map depicts the different rail lines, the stops it makes, airport connections, transfer points, which stops are handicap accessible, have public parking, and are connected to Metra within a proximity. Just looking at this map alone you can see areas of rail transit density, scarcity -- and start to see how cohesive the rail lines are with the other transit means. For instance, there is a rail line that goes to both major airports (O’Hare, and Midway) and all lines lead, or transfer, to the downtown loop with connections to the shopping, the business district, Union Station, Greyhound, MegaBus, and Metra. In April of 2009 the average weekday boardings was 649,857(1) of which an average of 110,914 of those boardings were transfers. That makes for an average of 2,690,215 boardings per week, compared to 506,883 weekend boardings. So assuming that each person that makes one boarding will make a return boarding the population of this community can be estimated at roughly 269,471. The Titan360 media kit cites the following statistics about Chicago rail riders: 39% of CTA rail riders have a household income of $75,000+. 58% of CTA rail riders walk 3 or more miles downtown (weekly). 66% of CTA rail riders are between the ages of 25-54 years old. 43% of CTA rail riders spend 30 minutes or more traveling to work (weekly/one-way). 42% of CTA rail riders are female. 58% of CTA rail riders are male. In attempting to talk about the geography of this community let us consider that transit typically puts people from their homes to work, or social places, and back. So the geography is not just their homes, it is also where they are going to -- as well as the infrastructure, tracks, rail lines, train cars, and administrative body. The overall history of public rail transit in Chicago, summarized from the Chicago-L.org web site, is that public transit via rail started in Chicago around 1888 with five different lines and companies. From 1913 to 1947 this community saw subways as well as unification leading up to the creation of the CTA in 1947 and it’s takeover of the rail leading up to the RTA in 1974, to it’s current budget troubled state today. Like many communities in the world today the CTA community is in trouble financially. While the CTA continually meets or exceeds it’s projected ridership expectations, the cost of doing business is still greater than the collected fares. Even with the funds received from the government it finds itself in recent years asking for more from both the riders and the local, state, and federal government in terms of assistance in many forms. The other shape the geography of this community takes is the places it’s going to which is primarily social and industrial. From Millennium Park to Washington Park there are many greenspaces that provide social geography for this community. The “lunch pail crowd” is part of the origin of the CTA and so in talking about geography talking about industry and where the jobs are can lead to comparing the greenspaces to brownfields. The Center for Disease Control defines a brownfield as “abandoned or underused portions of land occupied by vacant businesses or closed military structures, located in formerly industrial or urban areas”. While the CTA certainly gives great access to the many parks, community gardens, and greenspaces in Chicago - it also give access to brownfields and is in danger of becoming one it self. It is difficult to determine the exact number of brownfield sites in the state, however it is believed they exist in almost all Illinois communities from the smallest towns to the largest cities. While you might not be familiar with the term brownfield, you are certain to be aware of the closed gas stations and empty manufacturing plants in your own community. 9 I created and conducted an online survey in November of 2008, and the last of the 44 responses was collected in April of 2009. The responders had relationships to transit in the following ways: 30.2% Use a motor vehicle 55.8% Use public transit 44.2% Use bike/walk/other 4.7% Use nothing Admittedly this survey indicates responses from people with access to computers, and within six degrees of separation - and may not be a quality sample other questions on the survey in relation to greenspaces indicate that those surveyed all love greenspaces, but only half of the sample have access to a garden of some kind. This also indicates and underlines that this is my audience, myself included, and is who I am making the work for and that the work is about the problems with public space in Chicago. References 1. Conversation with Adele Gravitz 2. Image of mobile garden (Page 17) 3. Conversation with Phillip Matesic 4. Sally Elmiger, Corridors for a Healthier Environment, http://for-wild.org/download/corr1.html 5. Image of rough draft seed card watered lightly 2 times a day for 5 days (Page 18) 6. Charles Mulford Robinson, Moderns Civic Art or The City Beautiful, 4th ed., G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 7. New York and London, 1917, p. 1. First edition published in 1903. (65, one place after another) http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/race/Ortiz-2.htm Web. 14 Nov 2009. . 10. "CTA System Map." Web. 14 Nov 2009.