Hannah Raudsep Project #3

Revival Field:  Mel Chin

Mel Chin began this piece in 1990.  The goal of the revival field was to design a garden of hyperaccumulators (plants that can draw heavy metals from contaminated soil) over an old landfill site.  This 60 square foot plot rests on top of the Pig’s eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Mel Chin worked with scientists at the USDA to design the gardens and choose plants the could uptake the cadmium, zinc, and lead that contaminated the Pig’s Eye landfill. 

As you can tell in the images above the installation was al contained within a square wire link fence.  Within this fence was a circle fence.  The circle was divided into 4 quadrants each containing different plants to be tested.  This way the soil could be tested to determine which one of the plants was quickest in uptake of the toxic chemicals.  The four quadrants are clearly divided by the pathway used by the workers and Mel Chin. 

This project lasted 3 years.  It demonstrated that Alpine pennycress was the plant that best absorbed the metals, but none of the plants absorbed the metals quickly enough to achieve a significant cleansing in 3 years.