Day Two

Day Two: December 20th

We woke up pretty early to continue setting up for Farm Day. We made a bunch of bagels for breakfast and started working on a box that would become a prop for kids to take pictures with. We made and put up signs along the street directing people around. Whenever there was a spare minute, art was made. Once people started to arrive, the students worked on food preparation making things like: cracker, cheese, fish, and avocado appetizers; roasted corn; roasted squash and zucchinis. (The corn, along with other food used for the students, was graciously donated by Robert at Robert is Here–THANK YOU!!)

Meanwhile, our guest artist, John DeFaro arrived. As soon as the farm emptied out a bit, we began carrying large green Sake bottles to the fire, where we all gathered. John was very secretive about the project and sent off the students with pieces of paper and sharpies to write or draw about things they would like to let go of. Interestingly, a lot of the bystanders ended up participating too, which was fine because there were plenty of bottles.

While everyone was writing their deep dark regrets on white paper with colorful pens, John was putting sparklers into all the bottles.

When everyone was done writing or drawing, they stuffed their papers into the bottles. Then the decoration began. We could decorate our bottles with anything we found lying around and with colorful wire that John brought.

Once the sun started to go down and there was a little crowd around the fire, we made a circle with the burning firewood and we all placed our bottles within the circle.

Since I hadn’t gotten a chance to try burning the bottles as we had originally planned due to terrible weather, we had no idea what was going to happen with he bottles once they began heating up. The bottles started popping randomly within the fire ring. Some of the sparklers caught on fire and lit up the bottles so the notes inside were visible. Others didn’t crack and the notes just started smoking.

The last part of the piece was to used gathered rocks to throw at our bottles, ensuring that our messages were caught on fire and that our bottles were destroyed. And then we ended up piling up even more wood and making a raging fire and cooking more corn.

Some of the students worked on their artwork that night.