MARA ADAMITZ SCRUPE
[ Home ] [ Apothecary ] [ Eden ] [ Etherea ] [ Flood Stage ] [ Ice Storm ] [ Labor ] [ Paradise ] [ Preserve ] [ Rivers ] [ Rococo Wood ] [ Trash ] [ Sanctuary ] [ Hornet's Nest ] [ Suspicious Science ] [ Back To Nature ] [ Collecting the Preserved Garden ] [ Fota Lichens ] [ Bayou Plants ] [ Bienal ]

 
 EDEN

overall dimensions: 23' wide x 70' long x 22' high

Historic Evergreen House
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland

SITE SPECIFICS:
Eden is composed of 300' of clear water hose fitted with sprayers, wrapped and draped around trees and secured in place with non-invasive metal hose clamps. Groupings of hoses are suspended high in
tree branches approximately 10'-12' above ground, and are attached to a central spigot
which is in turn attached to a high power solar water pump.



 the project three months after installation - in full bloom

The pump is controlled by electronic timers. The spray produced by these components varies somewhat in intensity and duration depending upon the amount of  available sunlight and subsequently by power
produced by the solar power station.  The misting provides automatic watering for a hosta garden
consisting of  large specimens transplanted from the surrounding Olmsted-inspired landscape,
in a naturalized design beneath the trees and hoses.



The water pump collects and pushes water from an adjacent stream bed through a below-grade plumbing system, bringing water to the hoses and the garden. The pump is wired into the artist-designed solar power station which is located near the water source, and is secured within locked metal electrical boxes. The solar panels are mounted on a metal pole at a height of about 12’.

In ancient texts, Eden is a garden. The garden of Eden holds all possible pleasures and delights, but it also shelters and accommodates the serpeant. So, the garden is a perfect metaphor for all life experience, an arrangement of good and evil which each of us combines and balances as we might.

My installation EDEN is an evocation of the mythical first garden, but through it I am questioning not only the differences and choices between good and evil, but also what distinguishes human perception of beauty and ugliness in the natural world. My garden contains handsome and showy hosta plants, combined with serpent like coils of garden hoses fitted with hissing water nozzles. Visitors to my site will have an experience that combines familiar and well-loved flowering plants with utilitarian water hoses unexpectedly twined around trees and producing a not entirely unpleasant misting. The contrast between the visually attractive plants, the homeliness of the utilitarian hoses, and the physical sensations of water sprinkling from the trees in intended to produce an encounter with contrasting ideas, sensations, and aesthetic values.

I chose this somewhat unattended location on the Evergreen House grounds because I wanted my garden to be framed by an uncultivated version of nature. Doing this helps me draw parallels between tamed nature (the garden) and untamed nature (wilderness), thereby underlining the question of how each of us defines what in nature might be characterized as beautiful. Through this installation, I am interested in providing a physically and aesthetically pleasurable experience in the garden, but one that also allows viewers to have a potentially more thoughtful experience with regard to the artwork as well as the landscape that surrounds it. In this way, it is my hope to encourage visitors to enjoy the additions that I’ve brought to the site, but also to invite them to reconsider personal assessments of what is valuable, good, and beautiful in the natural environment.

During the past decade I’ve focused my artistic research and production on ideas concerning the garden as the interstice of nature and culture. Many of my installations integrate gardens grown with the assistance of solar-power technology. For me, the garden is a staging ground for exploring social constructs, most obviously those having to do with relationships between human societies and nature. The inclusion of renewable energy technologies as integral conceptual, visual and mechanical elements allows me to make my work almost entirely environmentally friendly while stimulating questions of human responsibility, at all levels, for caretaking the natural environment.