{"id":18316,"date":"2017-09-01T15:38:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T19:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/news\/article.php?ArticleID=18316"},"modified":"2022-02-09T10:05:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T15:05:09","slug":"18316_montclair-state-mfa-alumni-create-agricultural-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/2017\/09\/01\/18316_montclair-state-mfa-alumni-create-agricultural-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Montclair State MFA Alumni Create Agricultural Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer,\u00a0Montclair Alumni\u00a0Ruth Borgenicht ’16<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Dana Hemes ’14<\/strong>\u00a0were two of four artists invited by the\u00a0Visual Arts Center of New Jersey<\/a>\u00a0for a\u00a0summer lab for social practice\u00a0to discover and harness the bounty of available resources of the Art Center and surrounding land and community. The gallery was used as studio space to map out the artistic, agricultural experiments. \u00a0Members of the local public were invited to engage with the artists, who also had the opportunity to share practices at the local farmers’ market.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ruth Borgenicht tells us,<\/p>\n

My work harnesses local resources and generates a sense of place and community.\u00a0For the residency I worked on two projects.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first project,\u00a0LAWN PLOT<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0started last Spring when I requested that the art center allow a plot of lawn in their yard be left un-mowed. What grew was an astounding variety of what we call weeds, not to mention a handful of different kinds of grasses. With the help of young students we labeled 30 different plants and revealed that \u201clawn\u201d is actually a collection of plants.\u00a0 Some plants are native, others foreign invasive species, and discussions were generated as to what those terms actually mean.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second,\u00a0CULTIVATING CULTURE<\/strong><\/a>, merged two distinct meanings of culture:\u00a0ARTS and CULTIVATE.\u00a0The Art Center exists in the realm of ARTS while the town\u2019s farmers market exists in the second meaning of culture. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

On market day, I reintroduced vegetables, procured a week earlier\u00a0from the Summit farmer\u2019s market, back to share with the public.\u00a0 They were\u00a0fermented by\u00a0harnessing local bacteria or\u00a0\u201cculture” from the\u00a0Art\u00a0Center\u2019s gallery. This project merged the\u00a0two meanings of culture that were once confluent – the arts and agriculture. Reconnecting people to their surroundings and community through Culture and all of its meanings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learn more about Ruth Borgenicht’s work at\u00a0ruthborgenicht.com<\/a>.
\nLearn more about Dana Hemes’ work at\u00a0danamichelehemes.com<\/a>.
\nLearn more about the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey\u00a0<\/strong>at\u00a0artcenternj.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer,\u00a0Montclair Alumni\u00a0Ruth Borgenicht ’16\u00a0and\u00a0Dana Hemes ’14\u00a0were two of four artists invited by the\u00a0Visual Arts Center of New Jersey\u00a0for a\u00a0summer lab for social practice\u00a0to discover and harness the bounty of available resources of the Art Center and surrounding land and community. The gallery was used as studio space to map out the artistic, agricultural experiments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":118316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-19_announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207422,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18316\/revisions\/207422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/art-and-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}