17: David Burns and Austin Young on Fruit Trees on Public Property

17: David Burns and Austin Young on Fruit Trees on Public Property

Today on The Urban Farm Podcast we have David Burns and Austin Young of Fallen Fruit to talk about the placement of fruit trees throughout urban spaces as a means to cultivate community and food security! Fallen Fruit is a collaborative art project that began in Los Angeles in 2004 with mapping public fruit–fruit that grows on or over public property. Their projects include diverse site-specific artworks that embrace public participation. Fallen Fruit’s art works encourage the public to experience their city as a fruitful, generous place, inviting people to engage in sharing and collectively explore the meaning of community and collaboration through public participation and exhibition projects. Be sure to check out their kickstarter, The Endless Orchard project, which will help them plant, map, and share urban fruit trees!

Resources:
Fallen Fruit Website
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David Burns is a life-long Californian and native of Los Angeles. He earned his MFA in Studio Art from UC-Irvine and BFA from California Institute of the Arts. David is a co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a contemporary art collective that uses fruit as a material for creating art projects that investigate the boundaries of public spaces, (pause) including urban geographies, historical archives and time-based media. Prior to his work with Fallen Fruit, David was core faculty in two programs at CalArts from 1994 to 2008, curator for various exhibitions around California, and developed experience in the world of business and marketing. In addition to his work with Fallen Fruit, David is currently faculty in the Social Practice graduate program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Austin Young grew up in Reno, Nevada and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied painting at Parsons in Paris, France, and later transferred his interests from traditional painting to portrait photography, in which he is self-taught. Austin’s work explores personality and identity, and illustrates the sublime qualities of character that make celebrated people unique. In the Fallen Fruit project, which he and David are here to discuss today, he applies his interests and skills to the realm of urban agriculture.