BINO + DIANE
when a garden becomes a canopy of verses
when a garden becomes a canopy of verses
Mixed media installation
Ronald “Bino” Greer II is a creative writer and self-taught violinist from Detroit, Michigan. In response to the lack of gardens and green space in prison facilities, Bino uses memories of his grandfather’s gardens as places of refuge while incarcerated.
When a garden becomes a canopy of verses emerged from a collaboration with multimodal artist and professor Diane Willow, and their shared reverence for the sustenance, transcendence, and haven that gardens offer. Through a series of asynchronous call and response communications from their positions inside and outside of prison, Bino and Diane have envisioned a participatory healing space.
These plants are relatives of the Detroit summer garden plants that Bino grew up with. They represent the vitality of the plants that could not be present.
When a garden becomes a canopy of verses is nourished by those who shared their love for plants with the artists, and together they share this love with you. This garden is an invitation to reflect, connect, remember, and imagine.
ABOUT SEEN @ WAM
SEEN is a WAAC exhibition featuring currently incarcerated artists, activists, and students in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community who together explore issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home.
Representing a range of cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and diverse forms of artistic expression, people on the “inside” partnered with people on the “outside” on the basis of creative curiosities and personal affinities. This exhibition is laid out across two galleries that evoke the “inside,” carceral (east) and “outside,” healing and community (west) experiences.
The seven-installation exhibit works to stretch the bounds of the museum as a site for community engagement and critical examination of American carceral institutions.
Teams have worked together to better understand and explore carceral isolation and trauma and the many ways it has caused generational harm in their own bodies and those of their descendants. To bring healing to the cycle of harm, they connect their families, the community, and even themselves, through this exhibition thoughtfully curated with cacophony and quiet, isolation and community, criticism and celebration.
Artists Ronald “Bino” Greer II (by phone) and Diane Willow (in person) talk about their installation, when a garden becomes a canopy of verses, within SEEN @ the Weisman Art Museum.
Film by Kevin Yang, score by Shu Lor, animation by Emily Christensen. Additional assistance by Fong Lee and Louise Waakaa’igan. Still photography by Emily Baxter of WAAC; opening day photography by Jayme Hallbritter for the Weisman; portrait of Bino by C. Fausto Cabrera; poetry by Bino. Diane and Bino would like to thank Neil Anderson for his incomparable care in ensuring that the garden come to life.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Opening Day photos by Jayme Halbritter
Meet the Artists
Ronald “Bino” Greer II
Ronald “Bino” Greer is a multi-genre writer from Detroit, Michigan. He is a poet at heart and a daydreamer by necessity. Bino is one of several editors of the recent anthology, American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion (Coffee House Press). His latest work is published in a Darker Wilderness: An Anthology of Black Nature Writers (Milkweed Press).
Bino is a long-standing member of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is in partnership and collaboration with We Are All Criminals and the SEEN Project. His works have also been displayed in the Minnesota Science Museum.
Diane Willow
Diane Willow is a multi-modal artist and creative catalyst. By any medium necessary best describes her process. Working among disciplines and media, seemingly divergent perspectives converge in her practice of art as a socially engaged mode of tuning our attention to ephemeral experiences in everyday places. Her approach repositions a view of contemplation that is generally perceived of as solitary and removed from the flow of life into one that sparks a sense connection and community. She explores the subtle ways that we express empathy with one another, with other life forms, with sensing objects, and with responsive environments. Informed by contemporary views of nature, technology, and community, her fascination with the ways that we develop and transform our sense of place is embodied in her evocative objects, interactive environments and public installations.
Additional Artists
Diane and Bino would like to thank Neil Anderson for his incomparable care in ensuring that the garden come to life.
