8 Extraordinary Greens is a visionary project by artist Jenna Spevack. By constructing 8 pieces of furniture - a chair, kitchen cabinet and suitcase among others - she aims to encourage ideas about how to use our most domestic of objects in new ways to grow food. What could be more local than a dining chair that doubles as a salad garden?
Jenna’s aim is to: provide healthy greens to extraordinary people with ordinary incomes. To do this, she developed a sub-irrigated system for growing micro-greens - energy packed, edible plants, that uses lights and stainless steel growing trays incorporated into the furniture.
On the one hand an architectural design project, this is on the other hand an abstracted artist comment on the different values we place on food. In one exhibit, she explores Aesop’s fable “The Cock and the Jewel” which is a tale with lessons on relative value.
At her “farmstand” exhibit, visitors have the option to purchase 8 different micro-greens. You determine the price of your own exchange based on a set of choices that will support local, urban agriculture non-profits in New York city. Each transaction is recorded in the form of a “receipt” signed by both the visitor and the artist. A duplicate “receipt” is created and hung in the gallery to show the collective nature of all the different choices and donations made.
The project is on display now through June 2nd at the Mixed Greens Gallery in NYC.
