Project Grow is a brilliant social practice art project with a heart. Tonight celebrates their first harvest and launch of monthly events with film, music and speakers.
Project Grow is what happens when social practice artists, initiated by Natasha Wheat, now at CCA, engage a sheltered workshop for disabled adults, Port City Development, to create an urban farm. Grow also brings Portland's Street Yoga and art sessions to the workshop's clients. It is the dimension of social practice art I dub "socially conscious social practice art", which focuses on needed worldchanging, while potentially employing artists in social work settings.
The urban farm, built with new soil on a brownfield, is a community supported agriculture project, CSA, in which neighbors subscribe to the harvest. It includes vegetables, eggs and a project with goats, surprisingly charmingly expert at clearing blackberries. The project is for spinning goat hair into yarn, no animals were harmed in its making.
Tonight a panel comprising Linda Colwell, Dan McClary, Tim Donovan, and Ryan Pierce discuss "What Does Sustainability Mean"
Music is provided by Brainstorm and Jeffrey Jerusalem; films curated by Jesse Malmed.
At the Port City Development Center. 2124 N Williams Ave at Tillamook. Enter in the back of the building on either Tillamook or Thompson. 6PM-11 Free
