On Tuesday, April 3rd the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) hosted the event “Gobble Gobble Cobbler” with artists David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young of the Los Angeles based Fallen Fruit. The artists are working with the CCA and area residents to create an edition of original picnic tables.
In the event “Gobble Gobble Cobbler” residents were invited to prepare and share fruit cobblers, and then reflect on their childhood memories of fruit. Through sharing personal stories participants discussed childhood memories, humorous fruit truisms, York’s former states of abundance and the loss of agricultural customs and public fruit trees in the landscape. Phrases from the event will be inscribed on an edition of public picnic tables for York in the summer of 2012.
On their visit to York the Fallen Fruit explored the area, met new friends, worked with CCA Art Club students, learned about native fruits and looked for public fruit trees and plants, which were recorded in a map of York. (Many of the fruit trees on the map were planted as a part of the One Mile Garden Project by artists Bob Bingham, Robin Hewlett and Ally Reeves with the cooperation of the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation in 2009.) This map is one of many maps the collective has made from communities around the world. It is also among the maps of “magical places,” those communities that have purposefully improved themselves through planting public fruit resources. In the collective’s mind, this utopian impulse creates a public sense of generosity while public fruit itself serves as an interface for human interaction and culture.
Using fruit as a lens the Fallen Fruit investigate urban space, ideas of neighborhood, and new forms of located citizenship and community. The collective aims to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of and in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property.
This program is made possible by funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Good Works Foundation, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama and the many contributions of our individual supporters. For more information please contact the Coleman Center for the Arts at 205-392-2005 or email colemancenter@gmail.com.