Johnny Appleseed

Installation by Ally Reeves and Shaun Slifer

Through Oct. 31

Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt University

All sorts of art has a political dimension, and arguably you can find political implications in any artistic expression. It’s easier if you have a broad definition of “political”—certainly broader than getting out that “Bob Graham for president” message. It’s commonplace to stretch the definition of politics all the way into intimate experiences like sex and family relationships.

When it comes to overtly political art, though, there’s still a difference between saying, “Degradation of the environment is a theme in my work,” and making an active attempt to use art to change or encourage behavior in specific ways. I would describe art that tries to do this as didactic, a term often used to describe a style that is ponderous, self-righteous and boring. I don’t think that’s fair to this word, which literally means, “With the intention of teaching.” Art that tries to teach does not preclude that it can also give pleasure. The pleasure is what will give it power.

Ally Reeves and Shaun Slifer are two Nashville artists who have clear political and, I would argue, didactic intentions. They are young but have established a track record of strong work at ruby green, the Fugitive Art Center, Rule of Thirds and even on the side of Interstate 40. “Johnny Appleseed,” their installation at Vanderbilt University’s Sarratt Gallery, deals with the theme of humanity’s impact on the native natural environment, particularly in the form of early 21st century-style urban sprawl.

Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) was an emblematic figure in the transformation of nature essential to white settlement of the United States. The major influx of settlers into the old Northwest Territories (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin) occurred after the Revolutionary War, and the new arrivals cleared the vast forest an acre at a time, difficult work done by hand. As they planted crops and orchards, fruit trees were crucial, since the trees provided a source of food and drink, a cash crop and a connection to places people had left behind. The Ohio Company, a huge early speculator in “western” lands, required settlers on its holdings to plant at least 50 apple trees. Johnny Appleseed was a successful and eccentric nurseryman during this period; he would plant nurseries before an area was settled so that by the time people arrived, he would be there with apple trees for sale. His tale reminds us that replacement of nature has been a part of the American exercise from the start. The settlers of the Northwest Territories cut down the trees they found and replaced some of them with trees of their own. Humans became the creative force in this land, responsible for its flora, fauna and topography.

The show at Sarratt consists of two elements. One is an absurd suburban garden plunked in the middle of the space (more entryway than gallery), and the other is a sequence of drawings depicting native plants, with notes on their usage and seeds for viewers to take home and plant.

The garden is a large square area filled with mulch contained by a brick border. Typical suburban garden plants like monkey grass are set out in their plastic store containers. There’s a little walkway with two lawn sculptures of deer on either side. Flagstones lead to a TV set sitting under a satellite dish with deer painted on it; the monitor is playing video footage of Slifer and Reeves in the Smokies, trying to get up close to a live deer. This is an encounter with real wildlife, but it is artificial nonetheless. The animal is almost tame because it sees tourists all the time, and the footage has the feel of nature photography or some video stunt—two artifacts of a late culture very distant from the natural world.

In his gallery talk at the opening, Slifer made the point that most of the materials came from Home Depot, and he nails something here. I’m not sure I would have been able to make the association, but the materials here are extremely familiar. With its huge market share, Home Depot has defined the parameters of design in the suburban “frontier”: The company has succeeded by being comprehensive and inexpensive, so the stock includes a wide range of item types but a limited choice within any one, and the items all scream mass-production. The materials flow out of these stores and spread into yards and decks like a virus that flattens and homogenizes the landscape.

The ersatz garden forms part of the analytical effort of this show. The drawings that cover the surrounding walls lead to the action part, which gives “Johnny Appleseed” something more than a theme. As I understand it, Reeves was more responsible for this section of the installation. She has attached butcher block paper to walls and drawn a sequence of plants native to this area—pokeweed, Queen Anne’s lace, cattail and sumac—which contrast with the kinds of things you buy in Home Depot and try to protect from these “weeds.” She adds descriptions of how to use the plants for food or other purposes. With each drawing, she includes a container of seeds as well, inviting the audience to take some and scatter them at home. As native plants, they won’t require the fussy tending of store-bought ornamentals.

The didactic purpose of this section seems clear enough: Teach people about native plants and encourage them to help reverse the replacement of nature we have inflicted on the land. This exhibit does it much in the way a museum or nature center exhibit might—attractive drawings of the plants, samples of the seeds on display—though a smart nature center would probably try to sell the seeds. This raises the question of how the installation differs from a museum display, and whether we should think of it as an artwork or as high-quality graphics in the service of public education.

One quality of art is ambiguity, even resistance to interpretation. Political art has always had trouble when the capacity of art to produce stimulating ambiguity runs into the need for clarity to advance specific ideas or objectives. The ambiguity we need from Slifer’s and Reeves’ work comes from the full context that includes the garden. The garden’s intent is not clear; the video at its center shows the artists in an ambivalent role, intruding into this landscape to have an unnatural communion with these animals. There is no obvious call to action. At the gallery talk, Slifer said he was not suggesting that people go and pull the monkey grass out of their yards, although that could be the message if you were looking for instructions in that portion of the exhibit. (In fact, I have, or had, monkey grass in my yard: My wife hates it and has been trying to get me to pull it for a year now. I finally got around to doing just that the weekend after seeing this show.)

This installation does not have the visual impact that Reeves’ and Slifer’s previous pieces appear to have had (based on photographs). Part of what makes art effective in the service of politics and teaching is that it can encapsulate ideas in an arresting image. “Johnny Appleseed” may be too subtle visually. On some level, the garden is too much like actual suburban gardens, which are so artificial that one doesn’t seem out of place indoors—after all, they are a denial of the natural environment. The Sarratt space may also be hard to work with, with the context diffusing the impact.

The most direct charge of this work, to take some seeds and plant them at your house, is only part of a much less easily summarized challenge. It is very broad: to reconsider an entire way of life and all the physical and economic relationships that go along with it. This installation puts a difficult political, historical, even botanical context around the kinds of houses and yards we keep.