An art piece’s effect on society is usually an afterthought for artists and their audience.  The majority of what gets produced is within the realm of art for art’s sake, self referential and aside for the general innate appreciation of aesthetic value, understood only by artists or viewers with an extensive art or art history education.  Seldom is art produce that directly engages the community at large or directly benefits it.

One can come up with a variety of ways to define art.  However, one cannot devise a definition more pure, than art being an act of creation, or the product of creativity.  People love to distinguish art from design, the former being an object or event than be solely appreciated and reflected upon, and the latter being a system for using artistic sensibilities to procure an object or space with utilitarian function.  However, though being the road less traveled, there can also exist a bridge linking the two together.  For example, Mel Chin’s Revival Field which has used special plants to remove contaminants from a superfund site(extremely polluted) in Minnesota and still been considered art. 

Now imagine a Miami full of urban farms and community gardens.  People connecting with neighbors that they had ignored before, working together towards a goal of developing a site, or multiple sites that have the capability of providing them and their family with more nutritious, better tasting fruits and veggies than could be previously attained. Is this art? Can one define it as such?

 The vast majority of Miami residents cannot afford produce, or the amount that should be consumed by them to be healthy.  They flock to the center food isles where they can find cheap sugar and carbs or embrace the convenience of fast food out of the necessities of one’s schedule or budget.  Imagine a work of art that can change this in a significant way.  One that allows less advantaged residents to either grow their own food, or use food stamps to purchase high quality produce instead of going to Whole Foods and spending their whole paycheck.

 Now a dream deferred, Miami could one day achieve this, and perhaps sooner than later.  Though highly utilitarian and dependent on city planning and zoning, this could develop more if it were to be deemed the ultimate work of art.  An expansive act of creation that brings together communities, improves one’s well being (on all levels) and creates change more far reaching than any other work of art being produced in our city. 

 Many of you that are reading this may disagree that I am completely off track and irresponsible for posting it on an arts blog, but what is art lies in the eyes of the beholder and is defined by artists themselves, one of which I am.  In my humble opinion, this dream has merit and potential unlike any other project in the works.  May this dream come to fruition and redefine our city and the lifestyle of many of us.