ARTOBER & CP LIVE, "INVISIBLE NEIGHBORS" with LA-BASED STUDIO TUTTO
- Jennifer Jewell
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Welcome to our next airing of a CP LIVE*, this time in celebration of Artober in conversation with Sofia Laçin and Hennessy Christophel, of LA-based Studio Tutto.
On highway underpasses, school walls, public park welcome centers, and city water towers, the epic hand-crafted murals of Studio Tutto are telling visual stories of invisible nature to help people connect and become familiar with what is surrounding us, but we often do not notice. Their “thoughtful site-specific pieces invite and incite softness and meaningful connection between people and place, and in so doing, they are “optimistically shaping the way we see ourselves and the world around us.”
The interview and gathering for it took place around this same time last year, when Studio Tutto’s Mural “Invisible Neighbors” was completed and unveiled for the first time as a centerpiece for the Welcome Center at LA’s storied Griffith Park, one of the largest municipal parks embracing urban wilderness in the United States. With over 4200 acres of both natural chaparral and landscaped parkland, it is a complex and interesting refuge for humans, wildlife, and plant communities. Situated in the arid eastern Santa Monica Mountain Range, the park has varied topography, and plant communities including coastal sage scrub, oak and native walnut woodlands, to riparian creek vegetation and deep canyons. It is an ongoing experiment in how humans and wildlands intersect, interface, and, in the best-case scenarios, strive for a compassionate coexistence. One celebrated example of this struggle is the life of a mountain lion who spent his adult life in the park, became beloved by the world, and ultimately died there.
When Studio Tutto was commissioned to create one of their powerful murals for the reopening of Griffith Park’s historic welcome center, after much research and thought, their mural became “An artistic [visual] altar to the spirit of P-22 [and his last wild place].”
The mandate for me in these CP LIVE experiences and interviews is to not only give voice to (as the podcast always does), but actually make visible the many diverse connections animated by the gardening impulse everywhere. What this conversation makes visible to me, and I hope to all listeners, is that gardening is a multifaceted act – it is physical, it is intellectual, it is artistic and imaginative, it is tangible, and symbolic. It is one lens and method by which we know nature, and by which we participate in the nature of the world, and the nature of ourselves.
Through their larger-than-life art (or maybe it’s art trying to meet a truer scale of life’s enormity?), and the nature it brings into our view, Studio Tutto is growing, painting, and weaving the beauty of the sacred presence of nature back into everyday human places, and they are weaving humans back into nature’s places, like Griffith Park.
Are artists Gardening our world? These artists are. The more we see and support the incredible diversity of who Gardeners are, what they grow, and what Gardens mean, the better we grow our world.
ENJOY this artful conversation with Hennessy and Sofia!
*CP LIVE is a series of 10 CP conversations recorded and filmed live on the home ground of, and in support of, the cultivators of place with whom we are in conversation. These events, and the upcoming documentary series, are filmed by Myriam Nicodemus and Khoa Huyhn of EM EN in South Bend, IN. The series was made possible in part by funding from the Catto-Shaw Foundation.
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All photos courtesy of Studio Tutto, Jennifer Jewell & Cultivating Place Live. All Rights Reserved.
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JOIN US again next week, when host Abra Lee is in conversation with animation artist & MS in Horticulture candidate at the University of Delaware, Tracey Qiu . She is completing her master's thesis on the racial diversity being as important as biological diversity in public garden leadership.
That's right here, next week. Listen in!
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Thinking out loud this week...
Hey hey, it's Jennifer—
I have said this before and I will say it again because I don’t think we can hear it often enough: Cultivating Place has always been an art, and Art has always figured prominently in acts of cultivating place. Cultivating Place, this close to 10 year old radio program, loves these intertwining truths of place, plants, art, beauty and us.
A question becomes do gardeners artfully grow the world and
can artists in their own way be gardening the world? And the answer of
of course is yes, especially if we see it. And in seeing it, we value it and amplify it.
We are all gardening the world for better or worse. I say let’s
make it for the better, and let’s make it as artful as we can in the service
of all the lives on this generous planet.
In addition to all that is germinating and growing up within the Cultivating Place Community from the art auction to the CP 100 day challenge starting on October 31st , in other Public growing announcements highlighting people cultivating their own places with heart, head, and beauty…
I wanted to shout out The Butte Environmental Council - an organization in my very own physical community that is celebrating 50 years of service to people, plants, and place with a Gala on Thursday, October 23, 5-9 PM at the Lakeside Pavilion in Chico. Throughout its history BEC has provided and supported community gardens, and partnered with different entities to plant trees for parks and individuals. BEC has protected open land and worked to save wetlands, vernal pools, and the creatures dependent on those ecosystems.
BEC has been committed to protecting the air, land, and water for five decades with its signature events, the Endangered Species Faire and the
Bidwell Park and Creeks Cleanup. The Gala will feature music and drink, a history video and environmental awards, music and dance. We're hoping that everyone who has appreciated the work of BEC and enjoys a good party will come to this special event.
And more nationally, I hope you also got an invitation to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s call to join a movement Plant, Baby, Plant! A regenerative and contributing world view mind and set alternative to the many more exploitive and extractive mindsets our mainstream culture insidiously offers out to us. Cultivating Place is all about PLANT, BABY, PLANT with a love and respect for our places, their plants, and other lives. So big G gardeners, I think we are already founding members of the Plant Baby Plant school of thought and caring cultivation.
Let’s keep it up!
Recently, someone asked me if CP might make a yard sign for people to put into their front gardens and yards to proclaim a belief in all of us having the capacity to serve as a keystone species in our own ways – and I loved this
idea. I have a Neighborhood Habitat sign in my front native plant border, but I love the idea of having a CP one as well. I will work on this, but think the best way is the organic and DYI way – on old boards, or scrap metal or whatever fits
in with your place. If you’d like a logo to play with, send us an email: cultivatingplace@gmail.com and we will send you our highest res logo encircled by our guiding belief: a world where Gardeners are a Keystone species for people and places.
So glad to be here growing along together….despite all else, it helps, doesn’t it?
And PS: are you signed up as a registered bidder on the Art of CP online
auction going live October 23. I really hope you are. I think you are gonna love this beautiful multi pronged support of artists of gardeners end of Cultivating Place a worldview we grow better together. And we don’t only grow it better together, we can only grow it together.
WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE
Cultivating Place is a co-production of North State Public Radio, a service of Cap Radio, licensed to Chico State Enterprises. Cultivating Place is made possible in part listeners just like you through the support button at the top right-hand corner of every page at Cultivating Place.com.
The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, weekly communications support by Sheila Stern and Carley Bruckner, transcripts by Doulos Transcription, and regular guest hosting by Abra Lee and Ben Futa. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse, accompanied by Joe Craven and Sam Bevan.
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