STAR TRIBUNE, Fine Arts, Sunday, May 9, 1999, page f14

Todd Bockley cultivates horticulture as art

By Mary Abbe

Star Tribune Staff Writer

 

Former Minneapolis gallery owner Todd Bockley has taken up horticulture with an artistic theme. He has just finished planting more than 50 trees and 17 circular garden plots in Omaha, as part of a community outreach project in conjunction with the exhibition "Joseph Beuys Multiples."

The Beuys show was organized by Walker Art Center, where it debuted in 1997. It has been touring museums around the country, presenting the German artist's "multiple" sculptures, drawings and other works from the Walker's collection. Bockley launched his Omaha planting program last summer when the show was at the Joslyn Art Museum there. The show opens today at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and runs through July 25. Then it will go to the Barbican Art Gallery in London and the San Jose (Calif.) Museum of Art.

The tree plantings are an offshoot of Beuys' desire for art and artists to escape the confines of galleries and museums. A political activist and early member of Germany's environmentalist "Greens" party, Beuys promoted the concept of "social sculpture," or activities that engage people and improve society.

One of his most important social sculptures was his oak-tree-planting project in 1982 for "Documenta," a prestigious international exhibition held periodically in Kassel, Germany. Rather than exhibit his own art, he proposed to plant 7,000 oak trees in Kassel with a stone plinth beside each of them.

"It took years to do the planting," Bockley said. "He organized much of the planting before his death [in 19861, and then, I believe, his son took over and finished it."

Bockley's program modifies Beuys' idea to suit the U.S. landscape. In conjunction with the Walker's Beuys show, Bockley organized a planting of 1,041 trees -- approximately one tree per citizen -- in spring 1997 in Cass Lake, Minn., on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.

"We put the word out that if you wanted a tree, we would come and plant one at your home or business," Bockley said. "We did four large cedars at a powwow ground and some at the casino and elementary schools --just all over town."

In the fall of 1997, Bockley and Walker officials marked the opening of the Beuys show bv planting a cottonwood tree in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Last year Bockley carried the program to Omaha, placing oaks on the grounds of the Joslyn museum and in a nearby park. He also placed trees and gardens on a petroleum contaminated site in Omaha and developed a tree-giveaway program and planting ceremony to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This month he planted 30 oaks and cottonwoods in an Omaha park.

In June, Bockley will head to the island of Malta, where he and Richard DeMarco, a former Beuys associate from Edinburgh, Scotland, are organizing a planting of 7,000 oaks in early 2000. In conjunction with a July show, "Botanica: Contemporary Art and the World of Plants," at the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Bockley designed a "homeopathic planting" of trees and shrubberv for a Duluth park

Bockley credited Beuys for his move from gallerv to greenery: "Beuys often said that everybody is an artist, but what he was getting at is the idea that our nature as human beings is to be creative," Bockley said. "Planting trees is a way everyone can do that."

 

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