Bosnian Magic Garden

Bosnian Magic Garden

Melpotter.com, seedsinservice.com, @melissahpotter

Raised among multiple generations of crafters, artists and feminists, Potter's interdisciplinary research and art practice considers women’s culture through their handicraft, social customs, and gender rituals. She believes these practices are a distinct language and history, and often focuses on traditions that are endangered, underpaid and under-recognized due to industrialization, war, gender bias, and globalization. Through interdisciplinary collaborations with ethnographers, teachers, and artists, Potter's multi-media projects range from felt crafts in the Tusheti region of Republic of Georgia, to hand papermaking in the context of climate crisis. For decades, hand papermaking has intrigued her as a feminist and socially engaged practice, and she works to position this marginalized form in a broader art context. Potter's family history led her to more than two decades in the Former Yugoslavia, where she taught a generation of young artists hand papermaking and built two studios — one in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and one in Belgrade, Serbia. Her latest work propagates endangered plants for use as papermaking fiber to record the untold ecofeminist history of women collaborating with the plant world. Throughout the city of Chicago, Potter has been invited to curate gardens around themes ranging from the invisible labor of the prairie plant (and the invisible labor of women crafters working with these plants), to the disappearing woman’s craft of flax spinning and textiles. This year and featured in this application, one garden is in the North Side of Chicago, and another in the South Side of Chicago. The projects are multi-disciplinary in scope, and involve substantial research, project development, signage, interactive workshops, and publications as well as artworks. Potter's intention is to engage with the public creatively, as well as educationally and collaboratively to teach about the process of papermaking and all of its historical, artistic, and environmental implications. These plants are transformed into artworks through a process she calls “seed to sheet”: rare heirloom seeds are planted, tended, collected, cut, and pulped. Seeds are also collected. Potter makes handmade paper from these materials, cuts them into strips, spins them into thread on a drop spindle, and weaves them on a tapestry loom. The images are inspired by her ethnographic research on symbols used in rugs and textiles. In recent years Potter's practice has expanded to develop an evolving discourse for the underrepresented subjects of her work. She does this through critical reviews for magazines like BOMB, Art Papers, and Metropolis M, and various curatorial projects. Social Paper: Hand Papermaking in the Context of Socially Engaged Art, co-curated with Chicago-based curator, Jessica Cochran, was the first of its kind to consider hand papermaking in the socially-engaged art realm.

754 S Wabash Ave, Chicago, IL 60605

Created 2017; Documented Summer 2017

Photographer: Melissa H Potter

This garden is inspired by ethnobotanical heritage of Bosnia and Hercegovina and herbal medicine practiced by traditional women in the region. Two days before Potter left for a Fulbright in Bosnia in 2015, she found letters her grandmother and she wrote to a woman they sponsored in a refugee camp in 1995. Potter was reunited with this woman twice in her repatriated village in Grapska, Bosnia, which had been ethnically cleansed and turned into a rape camp during the war. This front image is the view of her village from her rebuilt home and garden. This garden was dedicated to overcoming the trauma experienced by women in war.

The garden was originally located at 8th and Wabash, Chicago, IL, but was dismantled for the Columbia College Chicago Student Center, now on that location. The garden is documented in the book, An Illuminated Feminist Seedbank, by Potter and Maggie Puckett.

While the Papermaker’s Garden at Columbia College Chicago was a short-term project with the intention of becoming a site for the Student Center, it is important to note to-date both community gardens farmed by Seeds InService have been demolished for development. The Papermaker’s Garden, founded by Columbia College Chicago graduate students in Book & Paper, was unique in the city of Chicago.

For decades, hand papermaking has intrigued Potter as a feminist and socially engaged practice, and she works to position this marginalized form in a broader art context. Her family history led her to more than two decades in the Former Yugoslavia, where she taught a generation of young artists hand papermaking and built two studios — one in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and one in Belgrade, Serbia. Potter's collaborative project, Seeds InService is a project with Maggie Puckett and embodies their concerns for climate crisis through the lens of ecofeminism. Through this project they propagate endangered plants for use as papermaking fiber to record the untold history of women in agriculture.

http://www.seedsinservice.com

https://www.melpotter.com

The project was sanctioned by Columbia College Chicago as part of the Papermaker’s Garden temporary project. It was a personal effort of professor, Melissa H Potter in collaboration with CCC alumna, Maggie Puckett. The project continues to seek spaces in gardens, homes, and other non-privately held spaces and by commission with the intention to challenge concepts of women’s history and the land.

M2M

Artist: Melissa H Potter, Melpotter.com, seedsinservice.com; Photographer: Melissa H Potter

M2M_0008