Tasty Art Installation Lets Visitors Pick Their Own Fruit

At the Stoneview Nature Center in Los Angeles, fruit trees are arranged according to the colors of the rainbow

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Most of us see fruit as delicious, wholesome snacks. But David Burns and Austin Young, the Los Angeles-based art duo known as Fallen Fruit, use nature’s sweet treats as the basis for innovative art projects. Burns and Young have traveled around the world to set up interactive installations, all of which center upon fruit. Their latest endeavor, as Clarissa Wei reports for NPR, is the Stoneview Nature Center, a five-acre park in Los Angeles where visitors can pick berries, lemons, pomegranates, and more.

Situated along winding paths and green lawns, the fruit is arranged in clusters that correspond to the colors of the rainbow: red pomegranates, oranges, yellow lemons, green avocados, blue and indigo berries, and purple grapes. Each fruit has special significance to California history. The Hass avocado, for instance, was the first fruit ever patented in the state.

With their fruit-filled installations, Burns and Young seek to encourage residents to engage with their neighborhoods in a new—and tasty—way. “We think of it as social sculpture," Young tells Wei of NPR. "It's an artwork that in a real way changes people's relationship to space."

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