Room To Grow Description

Room to Grow is constructed with cast-off furniture found at curbside, repaired, and painted with two layers of house paint.

The Minuteman Bikeway is an ideal place to spend time in the world of green growing things, and to consider issues of environmental health and sustainability, as well as how humans and nature interact. With the installation Room to Grow, local artist Freedom Baird offers a space to consider and talk about how human habitat and nature intertwine, literally!

The plants used here are native, non-invasive, and several support pollinators. By juxtaposing these plants with human-made objects – cast-off furniture – Baird raises questions regarding the origins of the elements used to construct Room to Grow: what sort of plants were this chair, this table, this dresser, before we turned them into furniture? From which rocks in the earth did the metal in this lamp, this bed-frame come from? From which drops of crude oil was this paint derived?
Nature creates, and humans create. And when it comes down to it, humans are part of nature. So how do these materials we use and the objects we create fit into the biosphere? 

We invite you to join this conversation. Look for Baird here this summer as artist-in-residence organized by Arlington Public Art and the Arlington Commission on Arts and Culture. She will be tending the installation and discussing humans and nature with visitors!

ABOUT FREEDOM BAIRD

As a sculptor and installation artist, Freedom Baird draws from her interdisciplinary background in the performing, visual, and media arts. Originally from New York City, she is based in Cambridge, MA.  She received an MS in media arts and sciences from MIT’s Media Lab, and an MFA in sculpture/installation from Mass College of Art & Design. She was an artist in residence on the Boston Harbor Islands in 2018 and has recently exhibited work at  the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA.