Samantha Everton :: Digital Photo Artist

Adding the finishing touch: just one last water before being taken to the gallery

I have had the vision of live grass growing out of a couch for years, wanting to show the extent of our separation from nature in our homes and modern lives. I've just been waiting for the right project and time to fulfil this idea. Upon attending the series of arts law seminars (everything an artist needs to know) I came across an invitation to artists to join "Couch Art" - perfect! Where better to put a grass couch than in an exhibition dedicated to couch art?

So began weeks of grass sowing and sewing. The wheatgrass seeds were planted with a little seed raising mix into six square metres of insulation foam, which I cut into patterns matching each section of the couch. This then needed continuous watering and a constant temperature of 20°C. Being the end of winter, and not quite warm enough, our lounge room was turned into a greenhouse. I kept the heating at 20° for 2 1/2 weeks, watered 3 or 4 times a day… quite entertaining to see. And amazingly, it worked! I now had 6 metres of grass grown flat to pick up and sew onto a couch… that was another week's work! The results were better than I hoped, producing a somewhat shaggy couch, "The Shag lounge".

The chair in its new home

It then became a living / dying work of art at "Area" gallery in Fitzroy. During the two weeks of the exhibition I started with a full-of-life green couch which slowly turned yellow and finally a drooping brown as the living art project ended. It died in the gallery from not seeing the outside world: a statement in itself.

This project is just the beginning. The project was such a success that I plan to grow an entire lounge setting and - once I work out how - grass walls also.

---Samantha Everton, 20/10/2004