Aimee Lee—Greening Mayfield Road
From the artist: In 2021, Aimee Lee will open a new hanji (Korean papermaking) studio in South Euclid on 4060 Mayfield Road in a business district, and will build an outdoor garden to beautify the neighborhood and provide botanical materials for papermaking and natural dyes. There is almost no green space in the business district on a high-volume road and the studio is on a visible corner, so a garden would make a noticeable impact, inviting pollinators and people, perhaps even encouraging other creative businesses to work in the area.
Stakeholders include the City of South Euclid and One South Euclid, the city’s community development corporation. Lee will invite students in the school district to be part of the process, to empower them to see the impact of well-designed urban gardens in otherwise uninviting spaces. She plans to work in conjunction with teachers and community leaders in South Euclid to create a program of safe outdoor activities for students to help design and implement a garden of containers to hold plants for papermaking and natural dyes. Consultants will include master gardeners from Cuyahoga County Extension, experts from the Metroparks, local permaculture experts to educate everyone about best practices for researching, choosing, and planting the right species for containers.
By involving young people early in the process, they may become interested in the process of papermaking itself and become the first generation of kids in the area to learn about paper, art, and global traditions of turning plants into useful and beautiful things—in their own backyard.