Lauren Bon, center left, discusses her latest work with Tony de los Reyes.
Photo by Gina Segall ‘12.

By Gina Segall ‘12
Staff Writer

“I am here tonight as an artist, but also as a mother and a member of a community,” proclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Bon to a diverse audience at Windward’s first installment of The Windward Salon Series, a new program of lectures on history, art, literature, media, science and other topics.

David Boxer, one of the initiators of the Salon Series, said that the goal for the Series was to create an opportunity for the school community to discover the possibility of lifelong learning. His idea was to “attract leading artists and authors” to share their work “in an intimate setting where there would be an opportunity for conversation and dialogue.”

Each event hosts a guest speaker who discusses his or her speciality. Bon talked about her latest work, “Strawberry Flag,” with Windward faculty member and artist Tony de los Reyes on Jan. 21 in Windward’s Center for Teaching & Learning. The audience included many Windward parents, some faculty and students.

As de los Reyes said at the Salon, Bon is an artist who “confronts you to ask the question: ‘What am I looking at?’” She, along with her creative team Metabolic Studio, creates art often closely tied to philanthropy. In 2005, she created a living sculpture titled “Not a Cornfield,” which transformed 32 acres of brown field into a fertile field of corn, and served both a practical and metaphorical purpose. Last year, Bon established a new project at the Veteran’s Administration in West Los Angeles called “Strawberry Flag,” which uses a self-sustaining water system to grow strawberries and recruits the veterans as participants. “I work on an intimate level with a big social problem,” said Bon.

“What I’m trying to do is map the biosphere of Los Angeles,” she said. Bon chooses sites for her work that are historically important to Los Angeles, and especially important to the history of water in the city. “The VA hospital in West Los Angeles where ‘Strawberry Flag’ is … that’s historically important because it dates back to the Civil War. Many people in L.A. don’t know that’s one of the oldest sites in the city,” she said.

The project itself sits on a grassy quad of the huge VA campus. Donated white tubes lie in rows, each with small circular openings on top that hold pots of reclaimed strawberry plants. The strawberries have their very own speakers in the white tubes, which 24 hours a day play “Music For Strawberries to Grow By,” composed just for them by William Basinski. The strawberries are irrigated by a large tank sack of water from the L.A. river. The water is powered by stationary bikes that veterans use for spinning classes, which power a battery to pump the water.

According to Bon, strawberries as a fruit were chosen as a metaphor because they are “highly profitable.” The strawberries, which also form the red stripes of an American flag, are made into jam that is then sold online at www.veteranspreserves.com.

For Bon, the VA is now “a warm spot in a not-so-warm city.” The “Strawberry Flag” site hosts afternoon tea, as well as large events for the veterans and their families. Most notable of these was last year’s “Strawberry Flag” Veteran’s Day event, which was the only one held on the entire VA campus. Veterans told their stories, sang songs, made prints with their families, watched movies filmed at the VA, played bingo and barbecued. The “Flag” site also hosted a Performance Series, including the creation of a human flag consisting of veterans in costume doing choreography.

The veterans tend to the strawberries on their own and measure the growth of the plants each day. Many of the veterans who work on the “Flag” project come from the Domiciliary Residential Care Center on the VA campus and are part of the compensated work therapy program there.

The veterans at “Strawberry Flag” who tend to the strawberries have now started their very own newspaper, called the Strawberry Gazette. The goal of the newspaper, which includes stories relevant to veterans and to the “Flag” project, is to eventually reach out to all 300,000 veterans in Los Angeles.

The “Strawberry Flag” project is only one manifestation of Bon’s artistic concept. She lists German artist Joseph Beuys as inspiration, as well as Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. She also draws inspiration from Samuel Beckett. “Samuel Beckett, who I see, even though people consider him a playwright, as a sort of sculptor because his texts are kind of visual diagrams of men and women locked into a kind of timeless empty space … I find his texts really raw and really inspirational. I also love the filmmaker Frederico Fellini for his ability to make incredible films that were able to tell an incredible story of his city, his time.”

Bon said she was “probably” an artist in her high school years. “I didn’t do very well in my drawing classes, but I probably thought as and was already living my life as an artist. (Beuys’ and Steiner’s) position is that everybody is an artist and for the world to really function in its highest order we would all be able to locate our creativity.”

Bon does not see herself as an activist. She describes herself as “an artist whose aim is to use her creativity to try to establish real, sustainable social change.”

Bon attended Princeton University and MIT. Her son, Windward senior Dorian Bon, is 17 and her daughter Maya is 14. “I’m really happy to be talking at Windward, and it’s been a great place for my son, Dorian,”  said Bon.

“I think that I want to communicate to the students that another world is possible, another city is possible. And that’s the message of all the work I do,”Bon said. “I think it’s important for students to know that there are all kinds of ways of activating space and creating new social paradigms within L.A., which is very much a city still in search of its identity. It’s such an exciting city to be young in; it’s still an open field.”

The second installment of the Salon Series is scheduled to take place on April 28.

The “Strawberry Flag” project had been scheduled to stay at the VA campus for six months, until the beginning of February. The final afternoon tea will take place Thursday, Feb. 4, from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. As Bon said, “a little culture is emerging on that site that needs to be supported.” To support the project and its stint at the VA, please send thank you letters of support to:

Donna M. Beiter, R.N., M.S.N.
Director, Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (00)
11301 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90073

“Strawberry Flag” is on Facebook and Twitter.

UPDATE: Lauren Bon’s “Strawberry Flag” project has received an extension on its Memorandum of Understanding with the city of Los Angeles and will have another six months at the Veterans Administration site.