Frances Whitehead is a civic practice artist bringing the methods, mindsets, and strategies of contemporary art practice to the process of shaping the future city. A series of linked civic initiatives include The Embedded Artist Project with the City of Chicago; SLOW Cleanup, a culturally driven phytoremediation program for abandoned gas stations; climate-monitoring plantings throughout the USA and Europe; and an urban agriculture plan with the City of Lima, Peru. Whitehead was the Lead Artist for The 606, a rail infrastructure adaptive reuse project in Chicago and continues to advise on the citizen science climate observation program as part of the art program. She has exhibited widely, at venues such as the UN COP15 Copenhagen; Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Viinistu Art Museum, Estonia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej, Orońsko, Poland; Brooklyn Museum; and The Drawing Center, NY, and has been cited by ART21, The New York Times, Carbon Arts Melbourne, Art/Design/Politics; Sculpture Magazine; Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, and Discovery Channel television. Whitehead is Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Her ABOG Fellowship will support Fruit Futures Initiative Gary (FFIG), an experimental community orchard project under development with the Emerson neighborhood of Gary, Indiana. Working in collaboration with community partners, religious groups, and nearby academic institutions, the project will use the multipurpose landscapes of fruiting trees and shrubs aim to engage, educate, and express the creative aspirations of the community. These first experiences will inform the long-term work of FFIG towards a network of community orchards and a conversation about cultural futures beyond conventional re-development strategies. As soils are readied and public imaginations engaged, community-driven productive landscapes and experimental orchards allow low-density neighborhoods to contribute to foodshed resilience, grow civic pride, and collectively evolve new creative foodways, linking place, identity and environmental justice.

Planting a Creative Community Lab Orchard in Gary, Indiana – Reports from the Field

Visit Frances Whitehead’s website

Artist portrait by Janeil Englestad + Chris Csikszentmihalyi.

Community Lab Orchard potential site in the Emerson neighborhood of Gary, Indiana, 2016. The prototype community orchard is part of the Fruit Futures Initiative Gary, a program to explore fruit-growing in Gary, Indiana. Image: Frances Whitehead
Soil sample from the Emerson area Gary showing typical topsoil on lake plain soils, excellent for fruit growing. Image: Frances Whitehead
Greencorp horticulture trainees installing large woody species at the Slow Cleanup field trials site. Image: Frances Whitehead
Opening day bike parade at the west end Observatory of The 606, Chicago, 2015. Created from trail construction soils, the spiraling seasonal earthwork re-grounds audiences in their geographic and cultural reality. Image: The Trust for Public Land
Created in collaboration with the Adler Plantearium, The 606 Observatory hosts community sky watchers with big scopes between the equinox and solstice events that highlight the season. Image: School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Frances Whitehead discussing urban agriculture potentials with Lima Mayor Susana Villarán, Lima Urban Agriculture specialist Gunther Yupari Merzthal, and Lima Environment Commissioner, Anna Zuchetti. Image: Vince Michael
This synthetic approach to ecological urbanism blends participatory art practices, climatology, and the expressive potential of public infrastructure to raise consciousness creating a new landscape typology, pink infrastructure. Image: The Trust for Public Land
Root masses of native prairie forbs under investigation for petroleum remediation in the Slow Cleanup plant trials. Image: Prairie Moon Nursery
Radial design of the Slow Cleanup field trials, known as The Community Lab Garden, after initial layout and planting, May 2011. Image: Frances Whitehead
Frances Whitehead surveying potential orchard sites with Emerson community member and Master Gardener, Walter Jones, 2016. Image: Jim Elniski
Diaspore – Proposal for a public orchard in a typical vacated façade of a Spanish colonial building in the Cercado de Lima, Peru, 2012. These empty facades offer open space for communal use urban agriculture. Image: Frances Whitehead
An east/west line of 453 temperature-sensitive, native, flowering trees form a climate-monitoring artwork, visualizing Chicago’s famous lake effect with a five-day bloom-spread. This civic experiment deploys a seasonal spectacle to engage citizens and scientists alike in understanding microclimate. Image: Frances Whitehead
An east/west line of 453 temperature-sensitive, native, flowering trees form a climate-monitoring artwork, visualizing Chicago’s famous lake effect with a five-day bloom-spread. This civic experiment deploys a seasonal spectacle to engage citizens and scientists alike in understanding microclimate. Image: Frances Whitehead