Monkeyfaces
“Monkeyface”I began working on “Monkeyface” unknowingly in May of 2008. This project was the first time I bought and consumed a young thai coconut, and, coincided with a change in my lifestyle. I was instantly a fan of coconut water and the meat inside. The long process of opening the coconut, thinking about how to drink the water, and scooping out the meat left me feeling sad when the time came to discard it. I wanted this party to continue so I began saving the coconuts I ate. I then began removing the husk and composting it, leaving the shell
behind.
This shell is first and foremost a vessel, the largest seed found in nature, form incarnant, everyone is similiar but slightly different. I began to notice a thin spot on the bottom of each coconut it took no effort to carve this out leaving a small hole. This thin spot is where water is filtered in a live coconut and it acts as the perfect drainage hole in what I now recognized as a planter, the water now going the other way. The urge to use these vessels for planting new plants seemed obvious in the spring fervor. I also returned the coconut
to it’s relational place, living, above our heads, just out of reach.
The issue of what to plant plagued “Monkeyface” in the beginning and led to a number of false starts. I’ve reclaimed many coconuts from perennials that are now dead. It does not make sense to grow edible plants in these because they don’t grow or taste as they should. What grows best are annual house plants and hearty succulents. They begin to take on bonsai character with the limited growing space and they need little watering as the soil has only slight exposure to air. I take clippings from the older plants in order to make new plants and further expand on the garden as new coconuts add up. The canopy grows over time as it would if it were alive.
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