You can smell it already, My Lord!
Yeah, it smells like sunshine.
Jam is really an integral part of the foundation of our project.
Oh, wow! Check this out.
This is perfect for us.
Thank you, mother nature.
It’s how we learned how to do collaborative artwork
by creating this thing that we didn’t understand,
and then learning about it by spending time with people.
I can’t reach it.
You can jump.
It’s really sweet.
This is made with love --
-Yeah. -...and like the goodness of nature.
-Yeah. -That looks great.
It does look great.
In 2004, we decided to walk the neighborhood between our houses.
And in this exact neighborhood, we discovered
there were over 100 fruit trees that weren’t being picked at all.
They were being completely ignored, while people are on their cell phones
or sitting in traffic, and instead going to commercial grocery stores
to get fruit that came from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
We’re also only going to pick fruit that is hanging over public space here.
Yeah, I mean, that’s the whole point is that the public side is for sharing,
and then the private side is for your family.
We drew a map and we didn’t mark the addresses and we wrote a text.
We took some funny pictures and then Austin had the idea
that we should call it Fallen Fruit to quote part of the Old Testament
that says to leave the edges of your field unpicked to leave the Fallen Fruit
for the stranger or the passerby.
Hmm, it’s sweet.
-Oh, really? -Okay, then I’ll have some.
Yeah, it’s really good, here.
Outside.
Oh, yeah; it’s excellent again, dang.
To us, the art was can we get people out of their cars,
get them to get off their cell phones and meet each other
and all around this sort of idea of fruit
that exists in public space.
It’s such an incredible illustration that, you know, sharing public fruit works,
and like, how much food would have gone to waste is insane.
-It’s – yeah. -Now, it doesn’t...
...which is a beautiful thing.
The ‘Monument to Sharing’ is an edible public artwork that goes on forever.
The ‘Monument to Sharing’ is a physical site that is the trailhead
for the ‘Endless Orchard.’
That 32 orange trees that –
and that was the project that we thought of as a way to, kind of,
take what the public fruit maps were doing in small neighborhoods
and connect them around the world and allow everyone to collaborate.
-I can’t reach it. -You can jump.
Okay, this looks like it might be a good orange.
Before we planted our first fruit park in Del Aire.
Del Aire, yeah, the fruit trees were not actually allowed in public parks
or parkways or any public space.
It’s really sweet.
And so, we worked really hard,
as a collective, to break down the barriers to fruit in public space.
Okay, dang, that’s really good.
And Los Angeles, you did not let us down.
Thankfully, we’re artists
because it was art that allowed that possibility to happen.
I mean, if we did not apply to be the civic art for a park,
and then demand that our material were fruit trees --
-Yeah. -...and then have to argue...
that fruit trees could be sculptural just like dead pieces of wood,
except they’re alive, and then win the argument,
it would have probably never happened.
One of the things that I love so much is that the ‘Monument to Sharing’
just really resonates with the community struggle to save the park.
So, this land was actually in danger of becoming public land at that time.
It was in danger of becoming warehouses.
This was going to be an industrial park until the community got together.
-Wow! -Really?
-Yes. -Wow!
I also love how you expanded the fruit tree plantings around --
Yes, we have one of the oldest housing projects a block away from here
and as the Endless Orchard --
the Endless Orchard extends into the housing projects,
and a lot of folks they can’t plant in the housing projects
because they have soil contamination.
They can’t plant any fruit trees,
so they really value the fruit trees that were given to them.
I liked -- I like California dream jam.
Jam is really like a -- like an integral part of the foundation of our project.
While we were thinking about a way -- a way to use the fruit, this new resource.
It’s how we learned how to do collaborative artwork
was by creating this thing that we didn’t understand,
and then learning about it by spending time with people.
One of the interesting things that’s happening right now
in contemporary culture, are forward-thinking companies
like Too Good, Good Save using rescued fruit
to take on these difficult topics like food security and food waste.
Okay, so, we’re just going to put all the fruit in this pot.
And as soon as we put the fruit in, then we just add 1/3 of a cup of pectin.
You just kind of stir it up, and then it’s going to come to a simmer.
We’ve always looked at our project, like – like, a Trojan horse.
It’s like, we always do something that is fun to participate in.
It looks fun, it looks beautiful,
but embedded in it are these deeper conversations
and to me, that’s my favorite kind of art.
That looks great.
It does a great.
Working with food in city spaces and at-risk communities
allows us to invite difficult conversations
that a lot of people can contribute to.
And then we all don’t have to have the right answer
because I don’t know what that answer is myself.
But I do know, as an artist, I can make work
that invokes those conversations in a continual contemporary way.
And when we figure out a way, as a people of the world,
to remove the condition of hunger,
then humanity will change.
I think change in a way we can’t understand.