San Bernardino, CA –  Artists are integral to healthy communities; the arts are a cornerstone, bringing people together, building bridges, and fostering social change. Arts Connection, The Arts Council of San Bernardino County, was awarded a California Arts Council Artists Activating Communities grant to bring a project from artist collective, Fallen Fruit to life in San Bernardino! Additional funds for programming were awarded by the San Bernardino Fine Arts Commission and Southern California Gas Company.

Fallen Fruit is creating a living artwork with the community’s participation! Upcoming events are taking place at The Norman F. Feldheym Central Library on May 12th, and The Garcia Center for the Arts on May 19th.  The library event will take place between 1pm-3pm, and the Garcia Center event will be from 12pm-3pm.  Activities will include a zine workshop (zine is short for magazine) to share our local stories around fruit, and “Endless Orchard” projects, which strive to build community through expanding public access to fresh fruit.

The zine workshops will result in the creation of a Fallen Fruit San Bernardino Magazine, celebrating our countywide community! Printmaker Uncle Bacon (a.k.a. Bob Hurton) and Inlandia Poet Laureate, Nikia Chaney will help guide participants as they create work through collage, illustrations and short written text. The final document becomes an electronic PDF available free for download.

The Endless Orchard events will include a public fruit tree adoption at the Feldheym Library, and a “plant the perimeter” event at the Garcia Center for the Arts. What if instead of going to the grocery store for an apple, you just walked outside your door? Fallen Fruit helps the community to create a real living fruit orchard planted by the public, for the public – a movement of citizens transforming their own neighborhoods. Neighbors adopt fruit trees and plant them next to the sidewalk to share with the community.  Participants sign an adoption form, agreeing to care for and share the fruit tree. Trees are mapped on the San Bernardino Endless Orchard Map- where anyone can map, plant and share fruit. The anchor of this map will be 12 trees planted on the grounds of the Garcia Center for the Arts.

The first “Fallen Fruit San Bernardino!” events took place in partnership with the San Bernardino County Museum in March. The museum hosted an art exhibition “Life in the Cracks,” a zine workshop and “Orange You Glad I didn’t Say Banana?” in which participants drew their self-portrait on an orange in exchange for a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. Future “Fallen Fruit San Bernardino!” events are being planned in Victorville and Crestline. Details will be announced as dates and times are confirmed.  For more information please visit http://www.artsconnectionnetwork.org

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. The collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations and happenings in various cities around the world, and will now include San Bernardino! The projects and works reimagine public interactions with the margins of urban space, systems of community and narrative real-time experience. For more information visit www.fallenfruit.org