Patricia Johanson

Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots

September 22, 2012â€“January 20, 2013

Guest curated by Sue Spaid and opening September 22, 2012,Â Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned LotsÂ addresses farming as both activism and art form. Featuring a real working farm within the gallery, a farm stand in the museum lobby, sculptures used for farming, videos and other installations, as well as multiple satellite projects in the community, Green Acres presents farming as art through a wide variety of approaches.

The show is presented in five sections:

Farming Awareness explores how artists have alerted food consumers to the significance of food production.
Innovative Farming Strategies surveys artistic practices that have contributed to the development of inventive farming techniques.
Community Farming/Farming Communities juxtaposes â€œcommunity farmingâ€â€”farms organized by artists for constituentsâ€”with â€œfarming communitiesâ€â€”farms implemented by artist-farmers with the public.
Biodiversity presents a cause important to the artist-farmer as artists have consistently considered their efforts in stark contrast to the industrial type of monoculture-farming.
Farming Mysticism shows artists offering blessings, rituals and other esoteric approaches that highlight emotional connections between people and the earth, as well as the historical pairing of spiritualism and farming.

Artists include:Â Kim Abeles, Agnes Denes, Dan Devine, Field Faring, Futurefarmers, Anya Gallaccio, Avital Geva, Lonnie Graham, Harrison Studio, Mei Ling Hom, Homeadow Song Farm, Patricia Johanson, Sakarin Krue-On, J. J. McCracken, Matthew Moore, N55, Permaganic Eco Garden, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Mara Scrupe, Bonnie Ora Sherk, Ã…sa Sonjasdotter, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Tatfoo Tan, Shannon Young

You can find more information atÂ http://contemporaryartscenter.org/

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21â€²s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in LÃ¼neburg, Germany) and Rana Ã–ztÃ¼rk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

A + E Conference: Day Two

Day two in the coffee-and-crumpets conference world.

Patricia Johanson was a highlight. Not just because her presentation was comprehensive, wise, and dynamic. Not just because her work is ecologically restorative, respectful of local religions and cultures, and deeply rooted in community practice. Because in this field, where ideas are infectious, where doom is palpable, where the issues at hand are so huge as to be hilarious, Patricia Johanson has done the work. She’s gone out to Dallas and made a sculpture that restored a lagoon. She’s created a wetland sewage system that is both a tribute to and a habitat for an endangered species. She’s done it while continuing the dialogue both in terms of artistic form– sculpture, painting, light– and ecological relevance. Full disclosure: I asked for her autograph.

The morning started with the music of Sean Shepard— composed for the Nevada landscape. It continued through the cultural waters of Australia, tromped through Italy on Amy Franceschini’s Not A Trojan Horse, and announced the research project “Venue,” an extended journalistic road trip by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley.

On a day where MacArthur Genius fellow Jorge Pardo describes the houses he builds as not-architecture, author Bruce Sterling called for a reexamination of the definitions. “Disciplinary silos are breaking down in places like this,” he said. “You can actually hear them shattering.” What we have is not nature, he said. What we have is Next Nature, a world bereft of unaltered landscape. And the slow dawning is the sheer magnitude of the responsibility for that landscape.

The evening ended with a cocktail hour on the roof of the museum. On the one side, the mountains. Urban trees. On the other, the blinking lights of the biggest little city in the world. In a sense, Reno is the perfect setting for the destroying of silos.