Waterosity - waterosity
Featured pictures
Waterosity - go green with a splash!
Take Back the Tap: Protect the Environment
Sheila Hawthorne, Hawthorne Landscape Designs & Debra Ensteness, landscapes by dae
In September, 2008, the MN Landscape Arboretum, located in Chanhassen, MN, invited artists, scientists, designers, architects, landscape architects, horticulturists, educators, environmental organizations and others to submit proposals for a juried exhibition that would explore the interplay of people, plants and water for the 2009 summer exhibit, "Waterosity - go green with a splash!".
After attending a mandatory pre-proposal meeting on October 9th, Sheila and Debra decided to collaborate on a design for the exhibition. We brainstormed many design ideas at a local coffee shop - anything that had to do with water. From past observations, we knew kids always remember the exhibits that are bigger than life. We vaguely knew about the water bottle industry, but we really had no idea just how much it was impacting our environment. Many hours of research provided us quite an education on just how great the impact is to our daily lives. Since we wanted to share this education as the focus of our exhibit, but in a whimsical setting, we decided to create a jumbo water bottle that included educational messages. This "bottle model" would act as a tool to teach children and adults alike how the use of disposable water bottles impacts the environment in which we all live. We titled our exhibit, "Take Back the Tap: Protect the Environment".
How do you build a jumbo water bottle? Since we are both professional landscape designers, our initial vision was for the basic form of this bottle to be constructed like a hoop-house. However, that still left many engineering challenges for us to work through. There are so many things you need to consider - the stability, safety, durability, visual appeal, and quality of materials.
We submitted our proposal on November 20th. On Dec. 2nd, it was announced that we were one of the ten selected out of 70 applications. We were thrilled!
In our proposal, we took the bold step of requesting the Arboretum to ban the sale of water bottles at their cafeteria and requested that they sell reusable water bottles instead. They agreed!
Then, on January 10th, 2009, we got the news that the Galleria (an upscale shopping center next to Southdale Mall in Edina, MN) had selected our design as the artwork they wished to display as a pre-marketing tease for the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. We were extremely honored! This not only put us on a fast track to complete our artwork sooner, but prompted some re-engineering to support the model for both interior and exterior conditions.
Michael, Debra's husband, built the framework of the bottle in his garage using 10' lengths of PVC pipe. He used a PVC heater to bend the the pipes into curved shapes to replicate the rounded bottle. We called him the "Noodle Maker" because the heating process made the PVC pipes as limp as noodles! He also built the bottle cap out of MDO plywood. We really appreciate all his hard work!
Educating the public was a key focus for us in creating this exhibit. Knowing that children love interactive signs, we decided to use question and answer flip-signs to share the educational messages. Jeff, Sheila's husband, constructed display posts to which our flip signs were mounted.
Collecting water bottles turned into a huge task! At the beginning of our design process, we believed we would need 1,500 bottles to fill the two end compartments of the jumbo water bottle. Sheila conducted two presentations to children of Pine Bend and Salem Hills Elementary Schools, a total of 1,300 children. It was fun to see the reactions of the children as they learned about the environmental impact of drinking bottled water. In exchange for doing the presentation, we asked the children to bring any empty water bottles from home to school to use in the "bottle model". They were asked to bring only bottles that were already at home, not to go out and buy more to contribute to our project. The children were really proud to help out by contributing their empty water bottles to our exhibit.
After seeing the "bottle model" pre-constructed in the garage, we realized that we needed way more water bottles to fill up the end compartments of this jumbo water bottle. So, we expanded our water bottle-collecting adventure to eco-sites and recyclers throughout the Twin Cities, as well as family and friends, neighbors and business associates. Everyone was interested in hearing about our project and very supportive in our endeavor. In the end, we collected over 7,500 water bottles.
The Galleria generously donated the use of the former Odds 'n Ends store space for us to build the jumbo water bottle. In addition, they provided the funding for the landscaping around our "bottle model" which was designed and installed by Plantscape, Inc.
Our art exhibit was on display at the Galleria through April 30th. It is currently on display at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, where it will be displayed next to the Learning Center from June 5th until October 4th. We are hoping our art exhibit will continue to be exhibited elsewhere in the United States after the exhibition at the Mn Landscape Arboretum is over. We believe our art exhibit has a very powerful message. Please contact us if you are interested!
We hope you take the opportunity to see it at the Mn Landscape Arboretum along with the nine other artworks included in Waterosity!
Sheila Hawthorne, Hawthorne Landscape Designs
Debra Ensteness, APLD, CNLP, landscapes by dae
Water Bottle Facts
Did you know?
* It takes 3 liters of water to make 1 liter of bottled water. What a waste of water especially for something that is so scarce in other parts of the world!
* 40% of bottled water sold on the market is filtered tap water.
* Bottled water costs more per gallon than gas! A gallon of bottled water costs $10 vs. $1.88 for a gallon of gas as of 3/15/09. Why pay for bottled water when you can get it for free?
* If you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 dollars annually! The same amount of tap water would cost around 49 cents.
* Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil in 2006, enough fuel for more than 1 million United States cars for a year.
* The total estimated energy needed to make, transport, and dispose of one bottle is equivalent to filling that same bottle with 1/3 full of oil.
* Only 20% of bottled water gets recycled. That means for every 100 bottles, only 20 gets recycled.
* It takes more than 300 years for plastic bottles to decompose in landfills.
Pictures
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Website Links
Shows
Galleria Show - March 15 - April 30, 2009
Sneak Peek of Winning Exhibits at the Mn Landscape Arboretum - March 13 - April 5, 2009
Mn Landscape Arboretum Summer Exhibit - June 6 - October 4, 2009
Website created by Sheila Hawthorne, Hawthorne Landscape Designs
March 2009
Guestbook
7/8/2009 2:01:31 AM - 002077848383
Sheila and Debra, This is very cool! I'm very impressed with your exhibit and with all the information. I didn't know most of the Water Bottle Facts. I hope I can get your message out. Theresa Parish
Family & friends
Sheila H
landscapesbydae@...
Related Pages
waterosity
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1/28/2012 7:50:07 AM