Sept. 7, 2009 issue
Art as a moving experience
By Jim Bishop Eastern Mennonite UniversityHARRISONBURG, Va. — It’s one thing when a work of art becomes a moving experience for the viewer, quite another when the art work itself assumes different shapes and literally moves.
Iris and Micah Cessna, children of Gretchen and Steve Cessna of Harrisonburg, help with watering the mobile garden as artist Cyndi Gusler watches. — Photo provided by EMU
But that’s sort of what is happening on the Eastern Mennonite University campus with an exhibit on the patio of Hartzler Library.
Through Sept. 25, EMU is hosting “Flexible Geography,” an ever-changing composition and interventionist art project that will generate a number of activities and events.
The artists and collaborators — Cyndi Gusler, Greg Stewart and Scott Keen — envision these events pulling in both artists and others in participatory roles.
Gusler is chair of the department of visual and communication arts at EMU; Stewart is an associate professor of art at James Madison University; and Keen is instructor of art and design at EMU and JMU.
Their outdoor installation will include “The Mobile Garden” and “Home for Urban Hens,” a roaming vegetable garden and chicken coop built onto carts that can move to different geographical sites. The carts were individually dispersed in temporary locations in Harrisonburg throughout the summer. For the month of September they will come together on the Hartzler Library patio to form a larger, more comprehensive garden.
“The intention is to introduce a new layer of earth that will roll over an existing terrain, a portable landscape that by its very nature produces a continuous overlapping, mixing and transformation of spaces, all the while making new connections with the urban-built environment,” Gusler said.
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