Urban Share Community Gardening Project: November 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Middle School Work Day at St. Paulus Garden

The youth from Trinity Lutheran Church in Pleasanton stopped by to do some work on our garden. They helped haul bricks to build a raised bed garden.

These bricks are the rubble from St. Paulus' old foundation. Then we covered the bricks with clear plastic to turn our raised bed into a temporary greenhouse.

If you want to recreate a garden like ours, note that we probably would not have used bricks (they're really heavy!), but they were in abundant supply at our site. We encourage you to creatively use the free plentiful things around you for your garden.

The other big project our volunteers helped us with was creating a ramp into our pit. One of the biggest obsticles of this garden site is that we need to find away for volunteers to safely enter the garden.

We were also able to start building a more permenant greenhouse.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Our Garden Sites

San Francisco

Alma Via - Lake Merced (a small garden at a senior care facility that we support)
Christ Church Lutheran - Sunset District (a sidewalk garden)
Faithful Fools - Tenderloin (a rooftop garden)
St. Mark's Lutheran - Tenderloin (raised beds for seniors designed for gardening with wheelchairs and walkers)
The Free Farm at the St. Paulus Lutheran lot - Western Addition (1/3 acre farm that includes a labyrinth, double dug beds, vertical gardening, container gardens and terraced beds).

Berkeley

Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran -Berkeley Hills (a biblical garden).

Oakland

Bethlehem Lutheran - West Oakland (urban farming style gardens and vertical gardening).

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Our first mural work day at St. Paulus garden site a success!

Embarking on the Mural Project: Day 1

Today we officially began working on our mural at our St. Paulus garden site with our muralist Leanne C. Miller. After posting an ad on Craig's List last week seeking free paint and receiving an overwhelming amount of responses, Megan and I drove all across the city and as far as the East Bay to pick up gallons and gallons of paint in preparation for today. Earlier this week Case and I cleaned and primed the walls, working late in the night to make sure we would be ready for our first work day.

So far we've been able to get nearly all of our materials free of cost, keeping with our philosophy of urban share. Thanks to all the wonderful people of Craig's List and the community for donating their paint and supplies!

This morning we began by outlining and painting the first two panels. The first panel depicts a cross section of earth and the layers which make it up. Leanne designed this panel so it can also act as an educational tool for children who will visit the garden (beginning this Saturday for our first work day); a wonderful resource we will surely use often! In the second panel, a volunteer is serving a warm bowl of soup to a guest of WELCOME.

The next panels to come will depict images of the original St. Paulus church steeple and stained glass window, our soon to be built mobile cart which will distribute free produce and engage with the community through various arts programming, plus images of fruits, vegetables, herbs, friendly garden bugs and even praying (literally!) mantises.

Leanne C. Miller, Muralist & Artist

Leanne painting the cross section on Panel 1

Leanne outlining Panel 2

Tamara follows Leanne filling in Panel 2

Leanne (left) and Tamara (right) hard at work
Location: St. Paulus Lutheran Lot at Eddy and Gough, San Francisco, CA.

Our next mural work day will be this Sunday, November 22nd - so if you're in the area or just curious, stop by and say hello, we'd love to have you!

Check back soon for more photographs of our progress!

If you'd like get involved with Urban Share please contact Pete at pete@welcomeministry.org

Friday, November 13, 2009

Introducing Pete Feltmen - Volunteer & Donation Coordinator

The generous support of the Sam Mazza Foundation, has enabled the Urban Share Community Gardening Project to hire a Volunteer and Donation Coordinator.

Vicar Pete Feltmen is a student at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. Please contact him to find out the current items we need for our community garden or to schedule a time for your group to work on one of our project sites. Email: pete@welcomeministry.org

Here are a few items we need as of 11/13/2009:

wheelbarrows
shovels
rakes
power tools: saws, drills, sander, nail gun, concrete saw, jackhammer
hose, hose holders
ladders
glass windows
garden gloves
trowels
watering system timer
pvc pipe
wood (all types and sizes)

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Introducing Robyn Waxman, Designer

The wonderful Robyn Waxman is assisting Urban Share with designing materials which will help promote our visibility and pique interest around our garden sites. Her focus is the St. Paulus Garden where she is working on encouraging curiosity and excitment and ways to bring community members and passersby to join us in our efforts.

Robyn Waxman has taught at Sacramento City College since 1996, serving as the department chair for six of those years. She has lectured and presented her work and thinking at the Artists and Art Director’s Club, the Art Institute of Sacramento, California College of the Arts, UC Berkeley and UC Davis Extension. Additionally, she is the Coordinator for Design Education for The Designers Accord.

Robyn holds a degree in Visual Communication from the University of Delaware and a Masters of Fine Arts in Design from California College of the Arts. She is an award-winning designer and educator, currently practicing in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Davis, California.

Most recently, Robyn’s work focuses on design’s role to form community and to instigate social and environmental change. Her current project, F.A.R.M was featured in several media outlets, including the SFMOMA blog and KPFA radio . Her public service design work was selected for the November 2009 Communication Arts Design Annual and won 1st place in the AIGA (Re)Design Awards in 2009. Robyn is also a "spotlighted" CCA Alumni.

Learn more about Robyn at:

www.robynwaxman.com

www.thinkdiscussact.org

Introducing Leanne C. Miller, Artist and Muralist

Leanne C. Miller, artist and muralist, is the latest addition to our team. Leanne recently completed a wonderful mural on Market and 6th Streets near Pearl Art, supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, with fellow muralist Helen Bayly. She will be designing and painting a beautiful mural for us at the St. Paulus Garden.

Leanne was born in Phoenix Arizona where she had the opportunity to attend a small public high school focused on the Arts in Scottsdale called New School for the Arts. From this highschool experience she went on to attend San Francisco Art Institute, the premier Fine art college on the west coast, founded in 1871. During this time she volunteered and interned at such independant Art Organizations, as Southern Exposure Gallery and Ar+space.Leanne also taught through the "Mission Voices" program at southern exposure, and was an artist assistant developing curriculum for the summer arts program there. She also co-taught art at the Arts Far west highschool in Oakland California, and also through "Root Division" based in the mission area of San Francisco. Leanne graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Since then she has been making and showing her work around San Francisco and New York. Recently she completed a mural for the San Francisco Arts Commission and will be in the winter and spring issues of Studio Visit Magazine.

The mural Leanne is working on for our garden will include images of the St. Paulus church steeple, its original mandala stained glass window and lots of yummy produce, animals, and helping garden bugs. We're all so excited to see this go up soon!

Below: Images of the Market Street mural recently completed by Leanne C. Miller and Helen Bayly for the San Francisco Arts Commission.