L.A. Harvest
Featuring: Evan Walsh & Alika Cooper, Esteban Schimpf, and Crenshaw Dairy Mart

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For the second iteration of “L.A. Harvest,” we turn to the idea of the ecosystem. A thriving ecosystem hinges on its internal harmony; interdependent organisms must collaborate in and with their environment, whatever it offers. Though sun-drenched and fertile, the steep hillsides of Los Angeles don’t always make a welcoming home. Acreage is at a premium, as are access to water and the blissful shade of old-growth trees. The intense uncertainty and isolation of the past three years have heightened existing threats to a stable and healthy life in this city—both horticultural and otherwise. The artists featured here represent those whose métiers and friendships combine to foster growth despite harsh odds.

Evan Walsh and Alika Cooper collaborate on city-wide group chats and plant sales, conceived in the depths of pandemic-induced isolation. Esteban Schimpf’s burgeoning indoor garden finds surprising harmony with the help of the inspired eye of designer Selina Che. Members of the artist collective Crenshaw Dairy Mart tinker with plants in the abolitionist pod, a civic initiative to foster community well-being and reduce food insecurity through connections forged by art and gardening.

In a megalopolis that both sprawls and crams stacks of homes together, most can’t help but borrow from the scenery around them. These artists’ relationships with their plants and fellow gardeners are an argument for meaningful systems of support that allow manifold life to thrive in an often-inhospitable setting.

Evan Walsh & Alika Cooper

Evan Walsh’s and Alika Cooper’s generative partnership was forged amidst the pandemic in a plant-focused group chat now more than 30 gardeners strong. Their conversations grew into L.A. Plant Sale, a seasonal pop-up event featuring plants, art, food, and crafts hosted with the help of Plant Intelligence Agency, Myco Myco, and Fay Ray Clay. Seven years in the making, Walsh’s collection of potted desert plant specimens sit in rows on long tables in the side yard of his shared Highland Park home. A UCLA-certified horticulturist, Cooper focuses on specialty maintenance and works mostly in other people’s gardens. In Los Angeles, this often means embracing the concept of “borrowed scenery”—the incorporation of views beyond the confines of one’s garden. Though they engage in gardening in different ways, both artists emphasize collectivity as integral to their practice.

Esteban Schimpf

Artist Esteban Schimpf is a committed maximalist: a collector, arranger, and adorner. The delicate ecosystem that Schimpf has called home for nearly 15 years is replete with a careful curation of flora, found rocks and fossils, dried fruit, and an extensive sound system and music collection. When his outdoor garden lies dormant through the winter months, indoors his home teems with thriving tropical foliage, prickly cacti, and, most recently, ikebana floral arrangements featuring such nontraditional materials as iPhone cords. The painter-turned-photographer cites the tutelage of his friend, designer Selina Che, for inspiring this new practice of attending to the natural balance among disparate objects.

Crenshaw Dairy Mart

For Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) co-founder and visual artist noé olivas, there is no separation between his art practice and the operations of CDM. In 2021 and ’22, the collective developed the Abolitionist Pod, an autonomous garden collaboratively cultivated in a geodesic dome in Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, a transitional housing facility in L.A.’s historic Chinatown. Throughout his work day, olivas moves between the pod and his adjacent studio space, tending to the ecosystem with CDM Program Director Vic Quintanar and member Taylor Lindsey, who also operates a plant shop and educational platform called The Plant Plug in her community of South Central L.A. Like all of CDM’s programming, collective participation is integral to the health of the pod’s ecosystem, ensuring that constant and individual attention falls on all its members—everyone watering, weeding, and turning the compost.

This essay was originally published in Carla issue 31.

Paloma Dooley (b. 1993, New York, NY) lives and works in Los Angeles, where she shoots exhibition and documentary photography for artists, galleries, and museums. She earned a BA in Photography from Bard College in 2015 and completed a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2016. Her work has been included in publications and shows at home and abroad.

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