Dorothy Ries Faison

Lawnboats and the globalization of lawns

Watercolor and water soluble pencil on found folded unlucky lottery card
8 x 5.8 in - 20 x 15 cm
2023

The allegorical lawnboat trade reconstructs the history of the Hawaiian sandalwood trade: trading lawns for sandalwood. An endemic species for a non-consumable alien plant.

This undermined the resilience of the population by forcing farmers and fishers to collect sandalwood, which led to starvation and death. The planting of lawns over the next 200 years has been an ecological disaster, resilience just one of many. The moon is a comment on the absurdity of planting golf course lawns.

The painting is on a folded and weathered unlucky lottery card found on a daily walk to my studio in Southwest France. Tossed cards are the unlucky ones. Probabilities make millions of these tickets unlucky. Ironically this card is for supporting the "patrimoine" of France.
2023
  • Dorothy Ries Faison

Lawnboats at Le Port

Altered French school poster: watercolor, water-soluble crayons and ink on an educational poster (Ogé-Hachette, Bonmati & Michel)
55 x 59 in 140 x 150 cm
2023

This vintage school poster has been altered through paint to focus on the exploitation of an aesthetic monoculture --the lawn-- in lieu of forests, biodiversity habitats and food production. Not trivial, lawns are the largest "crop" in the US. Specialization reduces resilience to internal and external shocks, climate being just one. Lawns are polluters and are wastelands for biodiversity.
2023
  • Dorothy Ries Faison

Water Catchment

Unlucky card: Resilience

watercolor & pencil on a found street detritus lottery card

6x4 inches

2022

Three-fourths of the forests in France are in held through private ownership. In light of the pressure from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is great pressure on these private landowners to harvest these forests for wood pellets and firewood. Sustainable yes, but the impact on biodiversity and habitat is immense. Carbon is returned to the atmosphere and a forest can take decades to reach the level of sequestration it had before the harvesting.

The goal in acquiring this forest is to create and promote a biodiversity refuge, one small parcel at a time. Planting native trees and fruits will expand the diversity, food and habitat for insects, birds and wildlife. Water catchment provides a critical resource for the plantings and a pond for wildlife on the side of the hill where no natural spring or source of water currently exists. This simple structure is emblematic of the building of resilience.

“Where resilience is process-oriented and, in ways, value-neutral, sustainability forces us to confront deep questions and uncomfortable potential futures.”

“Courage brings us back to the first foundation, People, because it is the people of the community who will build resilience—and they are the ones who need courage for all the pieces of resilience building…”.
2022
  • Dorothy Ries Faison

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