Ode to Potato

Ars Libera's summer exhibition Inexplicable Deeds, Alahovi Winery, Kuopio 2018

The environmental artwork grew and changed through the summer, suffering sometimes from drought, sometimes from rain and stormy wind. I constructed the installation from furniture given to me from closed-down railroads engineering works, abandoned objects like buckets from a smoke sauna, as well as useful plants.

In addition to potatoes, the artwork included strawberries, ...

... hairy vetch, buckwheat, oat, broad and creaper beans, pumpkins, parsley, mugwort and other herbs, as well as edible flowers like cress and marigold. Visitors were allowed to eat berries, herbs and flowers and sit on stools and wonder.

When autumn was approaching, seeds continued their lives in other scenes; some may have settled in their positions, breeding new harvest next summer.

Fierce weather incidents were trying both the nature and people during the summer. Drought destroyed food plants, wildfires and floods tormented people. The problems are common to our entire globe.