Preparation:
“Community Garden of Earthly Delights” succeeded at shocking, provoking, and gardening. We intended to challenge human standards of beauty within this concrete pit filled with discarded architecture school models and trash accumulated over several years. After raking this unkept garden and then sorting biodegradable debris from non-compostable trash, our placement of Danielle's rough cement vessels beside incidental rubbish reflected and countered the cast cement environment. Addressing our animal neighbors in this artificial space, we added our own ingredients: birdseed (offerings), chicken pieces to decompose as fertilizer (plantings), a blue jay found strangled in vines onsite (memorial to architecture-induced death), and cormorant skulls in the trees (ritual). By presenting offerings to birds and humans, this project was intended to leave its vessel, an overlooked garden, emotionally stimulated.