6B — Thursday, October 17, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Climate change as an issue is abstract — we know it’s coming,
but how many of those issues detailed in the climate report can we
actually see, in Ann Arbor, right now? Sure, point to trends, rising
temperatures and the melting ice caps (Iceland recently held a funeral
for one of their melted glaciers), but has anything changed in our
day-to-day life here that reflects any sign of climate change? Barely.
VSCO girls may be touting their reusable straws and campus might
have hosted a climate march, but how many red solo cups littered
the ground the following game day? People still use single-use
plastics, many are reluctant to even reduce their meat consumption
and others still deny the fact that climate change even exists. But we
know it’s coming and you’d be hard-pressed to find a scientist who
disagrees with that fact.
Beyond the statistics, social media has made it increasingly easy
to feel like you care about climate change without actually doing
anything of substance. Being able to like or reshare a story about the
effects of climate change has made it dangerously easy to passively
watch the world fall to flames, especially as we sit in a sheltered
university town in Michigan. Let’s also keep in mind that our state,
with its access to the lakes we know and love, has been deemed one
of the better places to reside as our climate becomes more and more
unpredictable. Pure Michigan is sounding pretty great right about
now. None of this is to say that it’s entirely up to the individual to
tackle climate crisis — we know it’s a systemic issue stemming from
the roots of capitalism, but surely there is something we can do.
Aside from calling your representatives and other forms of
political climate activism, one of the first steps, and something we
should all come back to from time to time, is to put ourselves in a
situation where we can understand what we have to lose. Ignoring the
imminent societal collapse that will come hand in hand with climate
change is dangerous. And what is happening to the actual Earth?
The coral is dying in Australia and the Amazon is burning in Brazil
(though that was less climate change and more poor leadership), and
those are both incredibly important, but when people don’t ever plan
on visiting either of those places anytime soon, this removed feeling
has the potential to manifest as apathy. Michigan has some gorgeous
places to visit to combat this phenomenon, but if you don’t feel like
driving the four hours to get to Sleeping Bear Dunes, the University’s
botanical gardens are a one-stop shop for all your climate-apathy
assuaging needs.
Located right off of Dixboro road, the Matthaei Botanical Gardens
are an Ann Arbor staple. This hidden University gem boasts gorgeous
scenery and houses an absolutely adorable collection of Bonsai trees.
But what sets the gardens apart and helps connect their patrons to
the realities of climate change around them is the art exhibits that
decorate the halls of the visitor’s center and continue throughout the
gardens. According to the garden’s mission statement and the Public
Events Coordinator, Alexis Ford, the art exhibits at the gardens are
meant to “develop a strong connection with the audience in a means
to foster enjoyment, stewardship, and sustainability.” Impressive
words, but what does that actually look like?
As you walk through the gardens, the art becomes apparent. The
entrance of the Gateway Garden was commissioned to commemorate
the Ann Arbor Garden Club’s 75th anniversary in 2005 and, walking
deeper into the complex, you stumble upon gorgeous fountains
surrounded by insane bursts of colorful flowers. Trees loom in the
distance, and if you visit in October like I did, the leaves have turned
from summer greens to vibrant reds, oranges and yellows. Seeing
the art, surrounded by various plants, evokes a calming feeling. In a
phone interview with The Daily, Ford spoke to how these pieces are
chosen and their purpose within the gardens.
Ford explained that artists can be commissioned to create
something for the gardens, or come up with and pitch their own
ideas. Once approved, the art is put up in the gardens and its visitor
center, which Ford described as a “non-traditional gallery space,” —
a fitting arena for an organization dealing with the non-traditional
problem of emotionally connecting people to climate change. In
thinking about the role of the gardens in combating an indifference
toward climate change, Ford pointed out that, when selecting the art,
she’s not looking for “a pretty picture on the wall.” She emphasized
the importance of instilling a feeling of “why” — why is the garden
important to visitors? Why are these pieces of art specifically here,
at the gardens? Eventually, she wants the art to prompt people to
consider what their role is in this precarious environment.
The fountains, the gates and the other permanent exhibits,
however, aren’t all that Matthaei has to offer. Ford talked about the
importance of working with people in and around the community to
create opportunities in which visitors can experience art in different
ways through the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Take, for example,
Metthaei’s collaboration with the Center for World Performance
Studies this past March. Composer Raven Chacon brought “The
Living Earth Show” to the gardens and performed an engaging
piece exploring “the urgent but approaching crisis of water shortage
burdening the region from California to the Navajo deserts.”
“(Art is) not a two-dimensional painting on a wall — it is an
immersive experience. So, art can often involve video aspects of
dance or theatrical aspects,” Ford said.
Ford also mentioned that in the future, Matthaei is trying to
further the experience of developing art that has a strong connection
with nature but also “exploring what that means for the particular
artist.” Matthaei is currently accepting submissions for their
latest community exhibit surrounding our micro environment and
challenging our existing views of nature from the human perspective.
It’s an exhibit meant to explore nature as if we were the small things
living in it — the bees and the birds and everything in between.
After visiting Matthaei, I started wondering what goes behind
creating a garden itself. Once you’ve come to terms with the
overwhelming “eco-anxiety” that seems to plague our generation,
it becomes increasingly clear that there are ways to give back to
your environment in meaningful ways. This past summer, I spent an
absurd amount of my time scrolling through gardens on Instagram,
watching as people built the gardens of my dreams. As someone
whose green thumb is a little more on the brown side, I decided it
would be beneficial to talk to someone about it.
In a phone interview with The Daily, Lindsay Wilkinson, a 2002
alum of the University’s School of Social Work and an avid gardener,
talked about getting her garden
started and the nuances behind
creating
a
mini
botanical
garden at her home. Aside
from how beautiful the flowers
were, the most intriguing thing
about the garden was the large
amount of wildlife that seemed
to always be present. From
her Instagram, it would seem
that this was because she had
decided to make it a butterfly
garden,
planting
specific
plants meant to attract certain
butterflies, like milkweed, the
preferred snack of monarch
butterflies.
“When (my family) first
moved into (the) house, the
former owners were really into
trying to establish more native
species onto the property. And,
honestly, that was a concept
that I had not really looked
at. Why would you plant plants that were meant to be in your area
versus plants that were ornamental and were considered pretty by
your big box stores?”
Wilkinson’s family has always had a vegetable garden in their
backyard, but this new garden was a product of observing the nature
around her. “Living the first summer in our garden and just having
this huge bank of native coneflower growing on the back side of our
house, all I had to do was step back into our backyard to be witness
to the fact that … these echinacea are covered with butterflies,”
Wilkinson said.
The concept of growing native plants isn’t necessarily a
revolutionary thing to do — once you really think about it, it’s just
common sense. But that doesn’t make it any less intriguing.
“Planting native is a neat idea because it’s just going to enhance
and perpetuate and support what’s meant to be there,” Wilkinson
said. As a result, her garden and lawn has remained pesticide free.
She has to contend with certain bugs, like aphids, invading her
garden, but she advises that if you’re planting things that attract
ladybugs (a natural aphid predator), then nature, not pesticides, does
the work for you.
Not only does the garden provide a summer haven, but as
Wilkinson prepares to get ready for Michigan’s winter, it also creates
a home for the bugs to stay when the cold hits. While her vegetables
go into the house, her coneflowers to stay outside and become hollow
— the perfect home for caterpillars and other bugs to spend the
colder months.
The garden has proven to be a community staple. She voiced her
concerns about having such a prominent garden (Wilkinson counted
nine neighboring homes that could see straight into the garden). But
she needn’t have worried. The garden prompted her to have more
conversations with her neighbors in one summer than in the other
three summers that she lived in the house.
Art is just as much of a dynamic concept as climate change, though
a little less threatening, and the different ways we interact with it can
affect how we choose to cope with things as scary as a climate crisis.
For some, gardening is just as much an art as creating a sculpture
or writing an opera. Creating a diverse, sustainable garden offers
insight into what it means to be a part of this world. We should move
towards ways of artistic expression that allow us to understand the
environment and our local ecosystems better as a whole. While our
long-term goal of overthrowing capitalism looms in the distance, we
can find ways to subvert the system and give back to the environment
by actively questioning our relationship with the world around us.
Weed it out: Gardening to understand the environment
EMMA CHANG
Senior Arts Editor
B-SIDE: SECONDARY
ALEXIS RANKIN / DAILY
It is difficult to describe an archetypal day in the life of Antonio Rafael. In
his teens, he was commuting from Detroit, his hometown, to a private high
school in the suburbs. He attended college at Eastern Michigan University,
where he studied economics. After Detroit filed for bankruptcy and was
subjected to state intervention, Rafael became increasingly vocal as an
activist and artist in his community. Most recently, he has devoted the bulk of
his time and energy to environmental anti-racism and activism and has taken
on a variety of roles in the process, including outdoor educator, urban farmer
and beekeeper.
Needless to say, Rafael has worn an overwhelming number of hats, but it
seems that this process of constant evolution is part and parcel of the life of
an activist. How else can we expect our leaders to keep leading, amid ever-
mounting burdens of historical oppression and ever-increasing awareness of
all the insidious ways that structures of oppression likewise evolve and adapt?
On the subject of his personal evolution into environmental activism,
Rafael described a parallel development he’s seen in his approach as an
activist.
“Changing people’s consciousness is beautiful and rewarding. I love to see
the analysis and thought of people around me grow and evolve and change,
but like, I also want to do something tangible, you know?” said Rafael in an
interview with The Daily. He then went on to describe “Southwest Grows,”
the community farm he has started behind his house in Detroit, with hopes of
someday turning it into a market garden.
Rafael is not alone in these efforts to push for the adaptation of agricultural
practices outside of rural environments. His native Detroit is becoming a hub
for the nationwide urban farming movement. Farms like Rafael’s are part of
grassroots campaigns for “food sovereignty” in marginalized communities,
which seek to reclaim control of the local food system. To that end, Rafael
has other projects lined up as well. This semester, he is partnering with
the National Wildlife Federation on a program with an ambitious goal:
to “create the next generation of environmental and conservation leaders
from communities that are most impacted by environmental racism.” This
program will take the form of after-school workshops in three Detroit high
schools and will feature both indoor and outdoor curriculums in order to
promote historical, community-based and pragmatic knowledge of the
environment.
Rafael’s work seems inextricable from the city of Detroit and the metro
area. Many of his environmental projects of his are literally rooted in
the city’s soil, and his street art from years prior is often anchored to said
streets, appearing as murals and graffiti on the facades of buildings and
even, infamously, on a water tower overlooking Highland Park. Despite this
rootedness, throughout our conversation Rafael also vigilantly drew parallels
between Detroit’s situation and those of other communities, historically and
transnationally. In fact, Rafael described this global consciousness as one of
the positive markers of modern-day activism.
“We need to be specializing and working on specific issues within various
issue communities, but we also need to be looking at the interconnection
of issues, and I think that’s another thing that’s really unique about our
generation and something we’re growing and learning through,” Rafael said.
Every so often, his responses to questions would reverberate in ways that
confirmed this conviction. This
was particularly resonant when
Rafael was discussing the colonial
critique often at the center of his
artwork, both in the United States
and Latin America.
“Everyone’s talking about the
Amazon forests burning, and
they’re like, ‘That’s the world’s
lungs!’ — but the world’s lungs
were here, too,” Rafael observed,
in a statement that lived at
the
intersection
between
his
community and something larger,
something interconnected and
infinite.
In that way, he reminded me
of other activists who fought for
change in Detroit throughout their
lives, like the late Grace Lee and
Jimmy Boggs, and the still-active
Tawana Petty. In fact, Rafael had
attended the latter’s birthday
party a few weeks prior to our
interview. And while Rafael spoke with admiration for the work of the Boggs
and their legacy, he spoke at length and with the greatest enthusiasm about
his contemporaries in the local activist community. It was perhaps his fellow
graffiti artists for whom he expressed the most admiration, recommending
the work of street artists like Sintex and Chaos and calling the city of Detroit
a “graffiti mecca.”
Images of Rafael’s graffiti and other works of art are surprisingly hard
to come by online. More often than not, such photos can only be found in
articles reporting on his public, unsanctioned projects — the ones that upset
the police. The aforementioned Highland Park water tower, onto which
Rafael and another artist William Lucka spray painted the words “Free the
Water” and a raised fist, made a number of headlines, especially when the
two were facing potential felony charges for it. But that might not be a bad
thing. I’m starting to reevaluate the importance of context to a piece of art,
and to question whether or not works of art, especially community-centric
artwork like Rafael’s, should be excavated from the environs in which they
were created and, in a way, also had a hand in creating them.
Rafael was definitely the one who set in motion my reconceptualization of
art and how it translates across space and time. At one point, I described to him
a dilemma brought to my attention through my coursework in the University
of Michigan’s Community Action and Social Change program: That it is easy
to name what a movement or work is against, but it is much more difficult to
name what it is for. I asked Rafael for his take on this question, and I did not
see his answer coming.
“When my house and farm are done,” he said, “that will be an articulation
of what I’m for. It’s an ongoing art project that I’m working on, my house
and farm.” I’d never thought of environmental work that way, as a form of
speech, as a work of art. But how narrow-minded is that? Perhaps if we saw
the environment as a work of art, as another being communicating with us,
I imagine the conversation around climate change would shift dramatically,
and for the better. I also wonder what Rafael’s garden might say, were I ever
to see it in person. I imagine something like, This is where it begins, but who
knows — perhaps I’ll find out for myself someday.
In conversation with Detroit-based Antonio Rafael
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
B-SIDE: ARTIST PROFILE
COURTESY OF NICK HAGAN
“Changing people’s consciousness
is beautiful and rewarding. I love
to see the analysis and thought of
people around me grow and evolve
and change, but like — I also want
to do something tangible, you
know?”