We are happy to announce that our founder and editor Ned Dodington has been recently selected to execute a solo installation at Houston’s Lawndale Art Center. Ned’s keeping the details kinda sketchy for the moment but promises to keep us updated as the work becomes more finalized. The project proposal is included below, and from what we can see involves tons of grass seed and nylon, and he keeps saying something about hanging IV bags of Miracle Grow…
Imagine the scent of moist potting soil and freshly grown grass as you begin to enter the Cavnar gallery. As you enter the gallery however, instead of merely walking on the expected fresh grass, you enter a small room filled with hanging, and sculptural living grass objects. Some are suspended from the ceiling, some installed on the floor — all are growing into each other. Freshly growing grass is everywhere around you. You realize that you are now in a highly artificial and uniquely natural environment. The exhibition is at once intricately designed totally unplanned. Human intervention is visible and also erased by the whimsy of living grass.
“Nature has never been natural” and as our global economy and global populations continue to expand and intertwine the distinction between what were once thought to be the natural and cultural worlds become less and less clear. Furthermore, with continued movements towards social equality (women’s rights, religious tolerance, abortion rights, and non-traditional marital unions), and environmental responsibility, the vanguard of social activism today appears to centered around bio-politics and ethics. It is becoming less and less clear what exactly makes us Human and why exactly we find that so important.
Poly-Lawn-Dale will explore these issues with the installation of a highly artificial/natural installation at Lawndale this coming summer. I propose to install roughly 300 nylon-stocking-filled pods of grass seed and potting soil, provide water and grow lights, and let the sculpture grow from simply black pods into green, verdant, almost hairy, living sculptures. Poly-Lawn-Dale will hope to show that by recontextualizing the natural and the cultural we can begin to understand new ways of being in a complex and multi-natural world.
