An Art/Archaeology of the Runner Bean Patch

Toad

Bumble bee

Slug

Me

Bamboo

Hemp twine

Top Soil

Compost

Milk cartons

PET water bottles

I thought it began with a toad.

While watering the runner beans in my partly re-wilded garden I surprised this individual, presumably feasting on slugs and snails normally slung over the fence. They leapt, but paused under a bean leaf, plainly in my sight, confident, showing me up as the interloper. Clearly, we both possessed a claim to the patch.

The beans had become an overlapping space; for feeding, hunting, dwelling, and other meanwhile activities. Created by me planting seeds and caring enough to water them nearly daily it had become a more-than-human space and I wondered who else passed through. 

The patch also contains different slightly unexpected objects; upended plastic bottles and milk cartons, shells and remains of columbine snapped off by me. Its being was more than life and I wanted to include these diverse materials. Everything contributed to making it just so. Thus the Art-Archaeology Project of the Runner Bean Patch began. 

Archaeology; the study of material culture, encompassing past and living ecologies, inanimate things and traces of activity. Art; a contemporary culture of talking beyond words about anything and everything.

Sepsis punctum (a fly)

Green Sheild Bug

Gatekeeper

Snail

Limpet (dec’d)