Shin Yu Pai's HEIRLOOM Project Gives New Meaning to Antique Apples

How do you like these apples: Hyperallergic looks at Shin Yu Pai's HEIRLOOM project, a "site-specific public art project that involves printing language on antique apples in Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park, Seattle." The poet and photographer's 26-section poem--written in the form of an abecadarian--is lettered on the apples with vinyl stickers; and it "invites visitors to have a more complex experience in the Carkeek Park orchard through a constantly changing literary narrative," writes Allison Meier. More:

“The language written throughout the trees alludes to different aspects of the orchard’s trees and history, and is meant to be experienced as a self-guided tour,” Pai told Hyperallergic. Remotely, the poem and an ambient audio component involving sound from different seasons at the orchard are available online.

“Heirloom” is part of the 12-artist exhibition Propagation: Heaven and Earth VII in Carkeek Park, co-curated by David Francis and Thendara Kida-Gee. “Just as there are hundreds of varieties of antique and heirloom apples, I wanted to explore uncommon textures of language that could enliven the environment of the orchard,” Pai explained.

The poem takes an abecedarian structure, with a section for each letter of the alphabet. For example “A” is for “Antique,” as in the heritage heirloom apples that grow in the orchard; “E,” for “Eye, apple of my”; “G” for “Graftage,” that is “propagating a vanishing line”; and “M” for “Minna,” for Wilhemina Piper who tended to the orchard. Her husband Andrew’s sweet shop in downtown Seattle burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1889, which brought the family to relocate to North Seattle where they homesteaded on the land that’s now part of Carkeek Park. Throughout is a love for the wordplay of heirloom apple names that readily lend themselves to the rhythm of Pai’s poem, like Northern spy, wolf river, Spokane beauty, hidden rose, Ozark gold, and pixie crunch.

Find some beautiful photos, and more info about HEIRLOOM, at Hyperallergic.