Client: Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Overview

Sustainable sculpture celebrating the power of growing seeds.
Even as a child, I was fascinated that a single small seed held the fractal code for a giant tree to emerge. In early phases of design through community engagement at a Brooklyn Botanic Garden seed exchange event, I sourced sentiments and ideas to seed and grow for a positive future from the community that are now etched into The Seed sculpture. This sculpture represents the fractal live potential incubated inwards, then growing outwards in ‘The Emerging Seed sculpture’. Sustainability is a key consideration for me, so the sculptures are designed to fit like puzzle pieces to further reduce waste cutoff during fabrication. The material is Richlite, made from FSC and post-consumer recycled paper and resin making it a durable and environmentally friendly material. The Seed 8’-1” x 10’-7” x10’-7” and The Emerging Seed 8’-2” x 8’-11” x 8’-11”

The sculptures were first on display in 2023 @Brooklyn Botanic Gardens during Seema Lisa Pandya’s 2023 fellowship with Ankhlave Arts Alliance. Works are included as part of the “Branching Out: Trees as Community Hosts” public art exhibit curated by AnkhLave Curator in Residence, Cecilia Andre, as part of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Power of Trees” program.

Goals

The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens had distinct goals of creating sustainable pieces that spoke to the ecology of the place and represented their focus on trees as community hosts. Over the course of the piece exhibition various song birds used the piece for perching singing to visitors as the walked in and around the pieces. Another goal for me personally and a testament to how I design my pieces is to reduce as much production waste as possible. The Seed and The Emerging Seed were designed as nested puzzle pieces so their curves were carefully designed to reduce cut offs. Additionally, other cut out pieces were designed to become pieces for other art pieces.

Process

Working with the dynamic Ankhlave Alliance Arts group administrators and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens the perfect site in the gardens was selected for visibility and for the clearing among a grove of trees surrounding the sculptures. Before the piece was fully designed and fabricated, I started with a community engagement activity working at and with the Botanic Gardens to inform and get them excited about the upcoming piece and ask them to participate in an activity. I asked "What ideas do you want to seed and see grow for a better tomorrow". I curated the answers and paired them down to single words that were then etched on the sculptures. Again a the sculpture closing in the fall during a traditional time of harvest and saving seeds for the next year, I asked a similar question to visitors. Visitors wrote their one word answers on actual seed husks of lunaria seeds I had grown in my garden to be used in another art piece using negative cutoffs from the Seed of Potential for my next art planting. Eco Supply worked with me to select the best material for the piece as sustainability was a key goal. I created the working Rhino and CAD files used for Eco Supply's CNC machines to fabricate.

Additional Information

The works reached acclaim during their time at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and was prominently featured in Time Out NY, NY-Pix 11 News, NY-1 television, and Hyperallergic. "The Seed" is on view at NYC's Governors Island during the summer of 2024.