Human Flower Project
Orrington, MAINE USA
Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA
Princeton, MAINE USA
Monday, November 16, 2009
Can’t Keep an Artist-Gardener Down
An inquisitive artist teams with green-renovators in Louisville, KY, to take on a tall horticultural order.
Studio artist Tracey Williams, a native of South Africa, perches by the vertical garden she’s creating for The Green Building on East Market Street.
Photo (detail): Courtesy of Mike Hayman, Courier-Journal
By Allen Bush
Tracey Williams is going places where no one else I know personally has gone. The South African native, who has lived in the United States for twenty-six years, is breaking new ground in Louisville, Kentucky, and hasn’t busted a single dirt clod. Tracey has installed a vertical garden, straight up the wall, at the Green Building on East Market Street.
The wall is possible because of the adventurous foresight of the building’s owners, Augusta and Gill Holland. The couple established a beachhead in the downtown art gallery district with the purchase of several older buildings in the area anointed as NuLu. The Green Building’s 732 Social was voted Best New Restaurant by the readers of Leo, Louisville’s alt-weekly. The Hollands have converted their Green Building following sustainable LEED guidelines. The renovation on the 110 year old former dry goods store has included a living green roof, geothermal heating and a fastidious respect for recycled construction materials.