Fritz Haeg

Fritz Haeg's work incorporates a range of disciplines including teaching, gardening, architecture, art, and even ecology. Haeg's formal training was in architecture, and while he has moved away from the traditional practice of it, his work employs many architecturally influences notions about space. Three of his major ongoing projects are "Sundown Schoolhouse", "Edible Estates", and "Animal Estates". Sundown Schoolhouse is a small educational venture run out of Haeg's geodesic home in LA, and in each session includes about 9 students and numerous guest instructors in disciplines ranging from yoga to literature as part of a holistic programs conceived by Haeg. Schoolhouse grew out of frequent semi-public gatherings Haeg had already been having at his house, a practice he initiated when he moved to LA from New York and developed his interest in teaching. Haeg said that when he stopped making Art, upon his move, was actually when he started seriously making work. Edible Estates is a project which transforms typical front yards into gardens full of food-producing plants, and has been enacted on several sites throughout the US and abroad. Each garden serves as an example of a creative way existing space could be re-worked to be more productive and green, and to fuse back functionality with pleasure-- aspects often separated in modern design. The gardens also serve as a catalyst for spreading this idea through photos, stories, pamphlets related to the transformation, and become a public opportunity for learning in a private space. In a similar vein, Animal Estates focuses on creating habitats for native animals in urban areas they have been driven out of, and (as in Edible Estates) using the creation of this habitat as an opportunity to educate through further materials such as performances or writings. For example, the first incarnation of this project took place at the Whitney in NYC, and incorporated an eagle's nest and beaver pond in front of the entrance to the museum as well as performances by dancers and educational speakers about each animal inside.
Haeg made a distinction between a utopian ideal of starting over and his projects which seek to deal within the reality of what already exists. I found his work all the more interesting precisely because, although inherently optimistic, it was also realistic. He stated repeatedly that his intention was not to tell people what to do or even to take on grand scale projects, but that the success of his project lay simply in people stopping to think about what could be the potential if everyone did something like make their yard into a garden. I thought this notion was very successful in the case of Edible Estates, because the effect is really so accessible to any individual with a yard, and the possibility of growing one's own food therefore so realistic. I think I would question a bit more the reality behind the Animal Estate project, simply because building a beaver pond in front of the Whitney in NYC is not going to have any immediate effect on bringing any beavers right to the middle of Manhattan. Finally, Haeg brought up the question of why optimism is often written off whereas cynicism so readily accepted, and where his art fits into the spectrum. I thought his work's optimism in the context of realism ends up being much more original and relevant in this case than pure cynicism would be, and his proactive approach to applying his knowledge in a way dictated by personal interests rather than recognition by existing systems particularly relevant to art today.