As our cities get bigger, our buildings grow taller, but our farms and gardens shrink. Trendy clothing stores and greenwashed corporate slogans are working double time to convince us that green is the new black, but what are our real strategies for building and staying green? A group exhibition at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, entitled "The Gatherers" addresses this question by presenting projects that merge art and activism to address urban environments. This includes work by Fallen Fruit, Amy Franceschini with Wilson Diaz, The National Bitter Melon Council, Oda Projesi, Marjetica Potrc, Public Matters, Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell, Rebar, roomservices, and Åsa Sonjasdotter--some of whom use parody to point out the absurdity of existing (non)strategies, while others take a more proactive approach. On a micro-level, LA-based collective Fallen Fruit maps the free fruit in their city's neighborhoods and encourages public consumption and awareness at "Public Jams" in which jam is made of these freebies. On a larger scale, Swedish artist Åsa Sonjasdotter created The Potato Perspective in order to use this root vegetable as a touchstone for tracking food trade, genetic modification, the political barriers to growing and eating healthy foods, and the future of sustenance in increasingly-colder climates. YBCA will also be hosting a series of public talks and workshops that address the themes of the show while inviting the audience to participate in the solutions presented. - Marisa Olson

Fallen Fruit, American Family, 2008, (Credit: Fallen Fruit)

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