Art to eat - installation art, Meg Webster, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

Art in America, Oct, 1993 by Frances Colpitt

Meg Webster's show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston last fail included 11 works from the past decade. Singular geometric sculptures made from natural materials, such as Cone of Salt (1988) and the earthen Mother Mound (1990), were presented along with Circuit: Offerings, a tall wooden table strewn with fruits, nuts and vegetables, which museum visitors were invited tc consume. First shown in 1986, Circuit: Offerings was installed at CAM to establish a transition from indoors to outdoors, where Webster's Kitchen Garden was and still is planted. While the title would suggest that its purpose is functional, Kitchen Garden, which contains over 100 species of mostly native Texas plants, is equally specimen garden (such as one would encounter at a botanical center) and ecological (as opposed to esthetic) earthwork. Not unlike Glen (1988), dismantled after several years at the Walker Art Center's sculpture park, Kitchen Garden has been the subject of some controversy. Although neither Glen nor Kitchen Garden was intended to be permanent, the decision to destroy the Minneapolis garden because of structural and animal problems sparked public support for the work. In Houston, it is the unmanicured, haphazard appearance of Kitchen Garden that has angered some in the community.

Planted on the sloping, right-triangular plot of land in front of the museum, Kitchen Garden covers 4,000 square feet. Straw-covered pathways wind through the garden, following the course of a sinuous stream of water and ending here and there in slightly elevated promontories. The stream is lined with admittedly unsightly black rubber, now bleached to a dirty gray by the sun so that it is less of an industrial intrusion than it was throughout the winter. The lining is held in place with earth and rocks, and is mounded over the sides of the trench. A recirculating pump and exposed PVC pipe are supposed to keep the water coursing regularly through the stream. At times, however, stagnant pools have formed at the lowest level of the garden near the sidewalk. Edibles, including fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, and ornamentals such as roses and various bulbs are planted to keep the garden in continuous production until its scheduled demise in the spring of 1994.

Quickly planted just before the show's opening in November 1992, the garden was roundly criticized for its scraggly appearance. By January, there were a few daffodils and hyacinths scattered among short, bare trees. Parsley and Chinese cabbage were coming up and herbs were beginning to do well, but the cauliflower was stunted. During the winter and early spring, some plants died, others went to seed before harvest and many of the vegetables succumbed to a late freeze. After casual attention by the museum staff during an especially rainy spring, the garden began to take shape in May. Among the blooming plants were white and purple butterfly bushes, yellow lantana and daisylike green eyes, and a few pale roses. A peach tree bore fruit. The hot, dry Texas weather, which curbs even the best-tended gardens, led to the harvesting of most of the vegetables by midsummer, leaving primarily herbs and some taller trees, plus some prolific little fish that were recently added to the stream. The staff has watered sparingly. Kitchen Garden remains spotty.

Although the vegetables are planted nearest the water and the rosebushes nearest the street, there's little apparent logic to the planting, which has a jumbled, capricious effect. The look of the accidental might produce a certain attractive wildness, but even this is thwarted by the tidy rows of broccoli and cabbage. The garden is best experienced on foot--up close---where vision gives way to touch and smell. Seen from the street, the Kitchen Garden is far from picturesque. Few gardeners can abide the crumpled rubber lining of the stream, which a landscape architect passing the museum once offered to revise. The offer was turned down. Webster's intention's I was told by the curator, was not to make a perfect garden.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Kitchen Garden is the discrepancy between Webster's utopian vision and the actuality of the garden. Webster's lecture, at the opening of her exhibition, presented Kitchen Garden as an interactive, community-involvement project. The edible plants, fruits and herbs are intended to be harvested and consumed by whoever wants or needs them. The implication is, of course, that the hungry or homeless are the ideal beneficiaries of this piece. Unfortunately, the museum's location at a busy intersection in an upscale neighborhood precludes just those visitors, while the residents of the area have plenty of room in their own backyards for gardens if they want them. School children are brought through the garden on field trips, but the tending and harvesting is left to the museum staff. One particular security guard with a penchant for gardening is often seen working in the garden or resting there on his break. A staff member told me that most people are hesitant to pick the food, which can only mean that the museum context that establishes the artistic status of Kitchen Garden and enforces a "don't touch" mentality is stronger than the ideology of a community garden. All of this, however, does not undercut the validity of the work. While not beautiful or bountiful, the garden has a life of its own--growing, blooming, wilting and dying. And its mere existence is .provocative, inhabiting as it does some undefined region between a small-scale farm and an inspired work of art.