This spring, Oxford will be getting a little bit greener courtesy of the Fiskars Project Orange Thumb, which recently awarded the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council $3,500 to create an urban garden outside of the Powerhouse.
Sculpture Garden artwork stand outside of the Powerhouse. (Photo by: Kamera Griffin)
Each year Fiskars chooses 30 grant recipients who aim to start their own urban or community gardens. With an already popular sculpture garden, the Powerhouse is the perfect space to start a project of this kind.
Wayne Andrews, executive director of the Yoknapotawpha Arts Council, is one of the people behind this undertaking.
“One of the things we thought would be interesting to focus on are some of the things that we think are part of the Oxford scene, one of which is food,” Andrews said of the garden’s inception.
One of the goals behind the urban garden is to bring together the community in a way that incorporates food, art and everything in between.
“We feel we are a community space, obviously with an arts mission, and we feel that food is part of that art,” Andrews said. “It relates to a lot of the ways we tell stories, relates to a lot of what we do and it’s the root of a lot of our conversations in art.”
For some time now, the arts council has been wanting to enhance the sculpture garden in the hopes to make it a more intimate space in the middle of the town. The urban garden and the grant money awarded will help to do just that, while also creating a firmer sense of community.
“It is surrounded by sculptures, so there is this sort of full circle aspect,” Andrews said. “You don’t have to just do art. Our lives are not divided up; they flow together and this space involves everything.”
The hope that this garden may also inspire a more natural, healthier lifestyle is also something Andrews and the Yoknapotawpha Arts Council had in mind with this space.
“Instead of just doing something to beautify the place, it was functional, it encouraged people to think about food— it would be an educational space,” he said of the reasoning behind the urban garden. “It will help us expand our programming. We have done cooking classes in the past, and we have food events that we put on. Now we have this sustainable educational space to talk about food and encourage people to think locally.”
The dichotomy between this natural space and the busy road that surrounds it creates its own sort of art. Andrews describes it as “a very living space on this very busy street” but through this it brings a calm to the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
The garden will be run by the Powerhouse and will come together this spring. This interesting and living part of our town will create not only beautiful, edible sprouts, but also inspire better lifestyles. According to Andrews, “you can do simple and small things to have fresh food around you.”
– Shelby Pack
