Tampa Heights Community Garden Artist's Talk
November 5, 10am-12pm

Tampa Heights Community Garden | 605 E. Frances Ave, Tampa, FL 33602 

Join us for a discussion on artist Claire Pentecost’s off-site installation of vertical garden pillars in conjunction with the USF Contemporary Art Museum’s fall exhibition Extracted.
 
Speakers include artists Claire Pentecost and Tory Tepp, anthropology professor Dr. Rebecca 
Zarger, youth representatives from the Tampa Heights Junior Civic Association, and garden members Kitty Wallace and Lena Young.
 
Pentecost’s multi-part project soil-erg proposes soil as a new form of currency to replace the 
petroleum linked dollar. The project consists of three parts: a sculptural installation of ingots made from organic compost (soil "gold bars"); a series of paper currency drawings that feature under-sung 
soil heroes, including environmental scientists, animals from the food-soil web, labor activists and philosophers of ecology; and an off-site installation of vertical garden pillars at three local community 
gardens .Soil-erg transfers the value of the petrodollar to the soil and in so the responsibility of maintaining the soil to the people within a community.
 
Installation of the vertical garden towers were made possible with help and resources from the Tampa 
Heights Community Garden, The Temple Terrace Community Garden, The Tampa Bay Gardens, Tampa Heights Junior Civic Association, and the University of South Florida Department of 
Anthropology.