BECAUSE OF FREEZING TEMPERATURES THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Join the LRWP and Kim’s Bike Shop as we plant trees and pollinator plants – seeds of hope – in honor of Martin Luther King Day and the kick-off to Windows of Understanding 2019.
Participants will be able to take their seedlings home with them.
The event will include a chance to meet sculpture artist
Olga Mercedes Bautista, who has partnered with the LRWP to create sculptures of trees made from plastic found at stream clean-ups and other events.
Location: Kim’s Bike Shop / 111 French St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Time: Monday January 21, 10-11:30 AM
Windows of Understanding is presented in collaboration by the New Brunswick Community Arts Council, Mason Gross School of the Arts, and the Highland Park Arts Commission. Leadership support of the second annual Windows of Understanding Project is provided by a Community-University Research Partnership Grant for New Brunswick awarded by the Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation at Rutgers University.
Healthy soil is important to stormwater management, and “Healthy Soils” is the research and action theme for the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership in 2018. The LRWP has planned multiple soil-focused talks, tours and events throughout the year, with a kick-off seed give-away at Kim’s Bike Shop (111 French Street, New Brunswick, NJ) on Monday January 15 (Martin Luther King Day). This is organized in conjunction with unveiling of the “Listen to your Neighbor, Listen to the Land” art installation developed by the LRWP and COLAB ARTS Wonderful Resident Artist Jamie Bruno. Jamie’s work is part of New Brunswick’s “Windows of Understanding” project.
The Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership and Kim’s Bike Shop invite you to join us from 2-4 PM on Monday January 15, 2018 for the unveiling of Jamie Bruno’s “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” and for refreshments. This is part of the City of New Brunswick’s “Windows of Understanding” project. We will be outside in front of the store planting milkweed for participants to take home, and handing out seed packets for summer gardens.
COLAB ARTS Executive Director Daniel Swern will lead a tour of the “Windows of Understanding” storefront windows leaving from Kim’s at 2:30 pm.
Background: The LRWP and COLAB ARTS National Endowment for the Arts resident artist Jamie Bruno developed “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” – an installation at Kim’s on display from January 15-February 28. “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” reflects the way the LRWP hopes to connect to our communities. The installation incorporates shoes filled with soil and plants. The shoes represent people, travel, and change. The soil represents our origins in the land.
In November the New Brunswick Community Arts Council invited the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership to participate in the inaugural “Windows of Understanding: We see through Hate” project. Windows of Understanding seeks to:
• Counteract the negativity and hate perpetuated in the headlines – by installing community art interventions that illustrate the compassion and love being exercised around us.
• Promote awareness about the vast array of social justice issues being addressed in New
Brunswick, connecting organizations with the wider community and each-other.
• Transform our “Main Street” spaces into literal windows of understanding.
The LRWP was paired with Kim’s Bike Shop (111 French St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901). Working with Kim’s and our coLAB Arts National Endowment for the Arts resident artist Jamie Bruno, the LRWP has developed “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” – which will be installed at Kim’s from January 15-February 28. “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” reflects the way the LRWP sees through hate as well as the way we hope to connect to our communities. The installation incorporates shoes filled with soil and plants. The shoes represent people, travel, and change. The soil represents our origins in the land.
From Jamie Bruno’s artist statement:
Across religion, race and culture we all spring from the earth and its water and soil. The plants give hope for survival and sustenance: hope to grow new roots and make new connections. The title asks the viewer to listen to their neighbors over the din of every day life. Our neighbors are people who live near us. People who live on the land we live on, yet whose stories we often do not know. In urban environments it can be difficult to know land too, yet she is everywhere: Under the pavement, in the water we drink, in the air we breathe.
• The shoes represent the human element, the “neighbor” through travel, labor and economic change in addition to empathetic connection across class, race and culture; an admonition to “walk in another’s shoes.”
• The soil represents land: absorption, filtration, and contamination. Soil health effects human health though the quality of our fruits and vegetables as their roots gather nutrients and the quality of the water in our watersheds as water either filters slowly through healthy soil becoming clean or flows quickly above compacted soil carrying waste.
• The plants represent the hope to grow new roots in new places and to make new connections. Plants store and slow water as it moves through the landscape, further cleaning it, thereby increasing the landscapes inherent value to local wildlife and to neighbors, whether they pass through or decide to stick around and plant their own seeds.
The LRWP and Kim’s invite you to join us from 2-4 PM on Monday January 15, 2018 for the “unveiling” of “Listen to your neighbor, listen to the land” and for refreshments. We will be outside in front of the store planting milkweed for participants to take home, and handing out seed packets for summer gardens.
For more information contact Jamie Bruno: jamie@colab-arts.org
