Seeds InService: A Papermaking Institute, an initiative of faculty member Melissa Potter and alumna Maggie Puckett, is fundraising for future projects, performances, and outreach programs by selling seed packets. Made with paper from the Seeds InService garden beds in the Papermaker’s Garden, and filled with seeds from the plants, the seed packets sell for $15 each, $40 for set of three. The stunning packets are hand letterpressed at the Center for Book, Paper & Print at Columbia College.
By planting heirloom vegetables and flowers also usable for papermaking fiber from the Hull House Seed Library, Seeds InService honors the legacy of Jane Addams, a Nobel Prize winner, and underrepresented American historical figure who founded The Hull House in 1889. Domestic and culinary crafts were central to Addams’ radical social reformism. Seeds InService explores the intersections of the art of hand papermaking with gardening, social practice, community engagement, and creative pedagogy in The Papermakers Garden. The project engages multiple collaborations and social practice artworks from Potter and Puckett’s work over the past five years.
Upcoming programming includes a luncheon at the end of September in the Papermakers Garden called Food Sex and Death, building on some of Potter & Puckett’s contacts with museums and organizations. This will be a special invitation event featuring plants both alive and dead to make food, art, compost, and mulch for next year’s gardens. Participants will eat on a large paper tablecloth made from the garden’s corn harvest this year, which will be placed in the garden bed as a foundation for mulch and soil preparation. Potter & Puckett will be sharing their research on the sex lives of plants and seeds, known as “a baby in a box with lunch,” and discuss strategies for seed distribution, planting and harvesting in urban environments and local activism.
To purchase seeds, send payment through Paypal to potter.melissa@gmail.com, or write an email to create an invoice.
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http://www.seedsinservice.com/
