Vickie Jo Sowell

It’s an honor and an obligation to contribute to my urban environment through my sculpture and environmentally conscious gardening activities. For two decades now I have been creating significant artworks for the community throughout the Bay Area.

The community garden that I founded and coordinate in my home City of Emeryville, “Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden,” is aptly named as an inspirational force for an urban resurgence. Since 2001 it has flourished on the site of a burned down gas station on the south end of the City.

Communities seek a sense of their own identity, rooted in time and space. My work often keys on this need, dynamically uniting the sense of the place with its regional role, a metaphor that fuses the vision of past history with our vision of where we’re going. My sculptures are installed throughout the City of Emeryville and beyond.

The video included in this year’s ECA shows a new sculpture just installed at the garden. “Hairy Foot Flower Bee” is a bee hotel, habitat provided for the native bee species that play a crucial role as pollinators in our fragile environment.