The Artist’s Garden Studio is a site-based, pedagogical project that brings together artistic practice, plant cultivation, and material transformation through an evolving, time-based framework.

The interest in developing this work in Tbilisi builds on an earlier site visit in 2018, which initiated an ongoing engagement with the region’s landscape, plant ecologies, and material traditions.

The proposal is grounded in the history of natural dyes used in Georgian and Caucasian carpet-making, where color followed the sequence:
plant → dye → thread → carpet.
The Artist’s Garden carries this logic forward, rearticulating it as:
plant → pigment → material → artwork.

This is not a departure from tradition, but an extension—from the production of a fixed object toward a more open engagement with material processes, temporality, and site. Pigment becomes a medium that can move across drawing, painting, paper, and installation, while remaining rooted in ecological and seasonal cycles.

The garden itself becomes a subject.

Developed in collaboration with VA[A]DS, the project would engage a small group of students (approximately 15–25), allowing for close, studio-like interaction while also opening into broader participation through workshops and shared activities.

The structure is intentionally light and responsive:

  • Fall (2–3 weeks): introduction, planting, and initial workshops

  • Winter: observation, research, and continuity supported locally

  • Spring (2–3 weeks): pigment work, material development, and presentation through public exhibitions

Between visits, a student coordinator or teaching assistant would help maintain continuity.

The Artist’s Garden is conceived as an ongoing, gentle system—one that unfolds over time, accommodates variation, and resists rigid outcomes. It functions simultaneously as a site of making, a pedagogical framework, and a form of shared attention. Each iteration builds on the previous one, allowing the work to remain open, cumulative, and responsive to those who engage.

The project aligns with the ethos of VA[A]DS: an artistic practice situated within broader cultural, material, and ecological contexts, while maintaining a strong emphasis on experimentation, process, and critical engagement.

THE ARTIST NATURE RELATIONSHIP

THE ARTISTS GARDEN STUDIO