Diary Forms: Community Garden

Community Garden is a miniature garden made from collected trash/unwanted objects.

I wanted to collect something from my friends, and the easiest way to do that was to ask if they had anything on their persons that they didn’t want or have any use for. That led me to thinking about repurposing objects and what it would look like to care for items that others had rejected. I wanted to create a final product that showed that care and inspired the viewer to reconceptualize their idea of ‘trash’. In the first draft, this took the form of a curated exhibition complete with wall plaques describing each piece of trash as if it was an art object on display in a museum, but that concept lacked the personal touch that I was looking for and removed the friendship aspect of the project.

For the second draft of the project, I initially wanted to take the trash items I had and turn them into creatures that I could then advertise as if they were at an adoption agency or pet rescue shelter. Very quickly, it became clear to me that my technical skills and the materials I had collected did not easily lend themselves to this form, and so I pivoted from fauna to flora. Using only staples and pieces of the trash my friends had given to me, I created six different flowers and attached them to a cardboard base, filling in gaps with popcorn (which was also an item a friend had bestowed upon me) to represent some sort of soil or fertilizer.

This piece represents connections with my friends and the cycle of growth. While it may not be clear to the audience, this is a very personal work, and each flower represents a moment that I shared with a friend and the time I took to repurpose their trash into something beautiful and new. 

Author: Eddie Yoffee