ABOVE: detail from Not a Cornfield, a conceptual art installation growing in Los Angeles throughout the month of September.

It’s been a good year for huge artistic interventions in public spaces, what with The Gates clogging New York, the opening of Millennium Park in Chicago, the new Lichtenstein sculpture in Philadelphia, and now, the much quieter but equally important Not a Cornfield project in Los Angeles. Not a Cornfield is, uh, a cornfield—32 acres of corn growing in an abandoned rail yard near L.A.’s chinatown district. The $3 million project, the brainchild of L.A. artist Lauren Bon, was planted in late July and will be harvested in October, leaving the site ready for construction of a park that the California State Parks system has been threatening to build for decades (naturally, it’s never been built).

Some residents have chafed at Not a Cornfield’s $3 million price tag, but keep in mind that that amount paid for the 1,500 truckloads of soil to plant the 875,000 corn seeds in, and the irrigation equipment to water them. The rail yard will be turned from industrial brownfield to arable land, and everyone in the neighbourhood will have enjoyed 3 months of Aboriginal drum ceremonies, free lectures and discussions, and film screenings. Sounds cheaper and more engaging than most public works projects, if you ask us. The L.A. Times talked to people who seemed enchanted and those who just missed the point, but Not a Cornfield, for all its crunchy-granola pedigree, sounds like it connects with people on a way more personal level than the chilly intellectual hauteur of Christo et al. You can watch the corn grow—seriously—on Not a Cornfield’s webcam.

LINK: L.A. Times > ‘Not a Cornfield’ Idea Is Food for Thought