Associate Professor Art + Technology
University of Florida
Title: Thy Neighbor’s Fruit
shelves, jars of marmalades and jam, video/audio
installation, variable dimension
2010 ongoing
Exploring the act of asking for something that is free and requires no effort on the part of the owner other than access to their personal space, I walk through my neighborhood collecting fruit and mapping the location of fruit trees. I document the journey from street to the private space of my neighbors’ yards, and record their narratives about their relationship to their fruit trees, perspectives on nature, food, land ownership, and the potential transformation of space that could occur when a resource is shared. I then preserve the fruit as jam and finally return the transformed fruits to their owners.
I am a social practices artist who creates installations, interactive sculptures, video and relational performance. My art practice’s affinities has with agriculture, foraging, neighborhoods, economics and sustainability, as well as mapping and geography. I examine societal issues from the perspective of my lived experience of a particular place with the hope that what makes one place distinctive informs what is significant and valuable about all places. The community is a resource for the creation of knowledge and scholarship and an opportunity for me to engage with and contribute to where I live.
