RAIR | 2007-08

Flo McGarrell

Flo McGarrell (1974 - 2010) was born in Rome, Italy. He received a B.F.A. in Fibers and an M.A. in Digital Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, 1992–1998. In 1997 he co-founded Little Big Bang, a non-profit arts organization which performed/exhibited for four years in venues around Baltimore. After earning his first master's degree he taught video and electronic arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and at the Baltimore School for the Arts. In 2004 he received an M.F.A. in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where his hybrid skills in sculpture and digital craft were utilized to create inflatable spaces, with light, sound, and video projection. In 2004, he had a solo exhibition at Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco, and in 2007 he was part of the Roswell Artist in Residence Program where he experimented in sustainable living as sculpture. From 2008 until his death he was director of the art center FOSAJ in Jacmel, Haiti.

Dear Roswell, I just want to live well. By "well" I mean I want to live ethically, sustainably, make decisions based on sound design and no waste. This year of experimental homesteading in house F allowed me to indulge my own strange ideas about life and personal space in the hope of learning something new and cleverly efficient. Of course I had to grow a garden! Stuff is needed to make stuff grow, so I began by driving down your bumpy gravelly alleys at night, alleys where I found trashed treasure to make a garden. Your dogs barked at me for loading the car full of your lawn wastes, old garden hoses, bricks. I lurked behind your businesses and box stores to see what didn't sell this week: tomatillos for the compost, garment cellophane to cover seedling flats, giant flocked roses for Valentine's Day frost. I trolled your recycling bins, for interesting planters and twice found a batch of unopened bottles of tequila and other vintage spirits. I learned about your people and their land almost as an an anthropological archeologist does. I'm sorry to say I have seen what we throw away, and we are an obscenely wasteful people, as most of us North Americans tend to be. Except for the odd packet of seed I didn't need to buy anything, I grew a whole garden using nothing but our waste. I am either very fortunate or persistent in that the things I need always have a way of finding me, as do the solutions to many given problems; often both find me at the same time and that is a sure sign that I'm on the right track. After all this taking from you, I felt the need to give back -- so I did not dig and turn up your soil to deplete it of nutrients, instead I added humic love in the form of sheet mulch to nourish the yellow alkaline dust your scorpions call soil. To my astonishment, worms moved in after just a week! An even more taxing commitment to your well being was my use of greywater -- hand carried bucket by hand-carried bucket -- to flush the toilet and to water the garden. Now I am mindful of almost every drop of water I use. Thank you Roswell for always providing for and teaching me so much. I know there is still so much more to learn. I hope you will be inspired to use this little bit of data called a "recipe" as a hinge between my experience and your own, and take the experience of living well in Roswell far beyond what I was capable of in one year.

Love Always, F

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Rair exhibition • Flo McGarrell •January 19 - February 17, 2008