News

Environmental Science Students Collaborate with Well-Known Artist Tattfoo Tan to Build Mobile Gardens

--Project addresses issues of community engagement, ecology, sustainability, and healthy living

--Finished gardens will be included in upcoming William Paterson University Galleries exhibition, Living Together: Nurturing Nature in the Built Environment

Twenty William Paterson University students taking an environmental science course in land use collaborated on a mobile garden art project with Staten Island-based artist Tattfoo Tan that is designed to help them think about issues of ecology, climate change, and nutrition.

“One of the themes in my Environmental Factors in Land Use class is that in order for ‘green initiatives’ to work there needs to be community buy-in.  This requires a lot of dialog with communities,” says Nicole Davi, assistant professor of environmental science. “An environmental artist like Tattfoo Tan can engage communities through his art and draw attention to these issues. My students will get a chance to think about how they themselves would engage a community about the importance of some of the issues that we discuss in class.”

Tan, whose S.O.S. (Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship.) projects include group participation and raising awareness about environmental issues, worked with the students on March 9 in the University Galleries on campus to create mobile gardens using wheeled objects such as carts, chairs, suitcases or other items, along with containers, soil and plants.  Students will also develop a campaign to spread environmental awareness on campus of through Tan’s S.S.S. Pledge project, which asks others to participate in sustainability activities such as recycling and energy conservation.

The mobile gardens will be included as part of the William Paterson University Galleries exhibition, Living Together: Nurturing Nature in the Built Environment. The exhibition, which runs from March 21 through May 13, 2016 and includes works by Tan and artists Ellie Irons, Anne Percoco and Dana Fritz, addresses the complex relationship between humans and the natural world, and features plants as well as photography, drawing, and collage.  

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