Arno Goetz Publishes Book About Rogue Garden Project in Academy's Annex

Cranbrook Academy of Art and Arno Goetz (MFA Print Media 2023) are excited to announce the publication of Goetz’s new book, To Be a Garden: Photographs from a Year Believing in Rogue Landscaping Practices, a collection of essays and photographs about the Annex Garden Project, Goetz’s land-based installation on the Cranbrook Academy of Art campus.

To create this rogue garden, Goetz worked with the institution to pause all landscaping operations in a walled garden (80’ x 15’) for 18 months. The basic lawn monoculture exploded into a biodiverse haven, blurring the line between art and ecological restoration. The needs of the garden were often at odds with the institution’s needs, and Goetz photographed the tensions between control and non-control taking place in the garden daily.

This book brings together 275 photographs, selected from thousands of images, which are compiled for the first time to tell the complete story of the Annex Garden. With an additional essay by Cooper Holoweski, Head of Cranbrook’s Print Media Department, this book shares the history of Cranbrook and explores the Annex Garden project from conception to completion, all shown through Goetz’s wild, beautiful, and considered images.

To Be a Garden was designed by Chris Baker  (MFA 2D Design 2023) with text by Arno Goetz and Cooper Holoweski, and photographs by Arno Goetz. Printed by Conveyor Studio and published by the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2024.

To Be a Garden is available for purchase through his website www.arnogoetz.com.

Arno Goetz lives in Dallas and makes art about the urban relationship to nature and how the tension between two competing land usages holds clues about a society’s value systems.

In his most recent project, Goetz creates birdhouses from discarded wood-like cabinet doors and fenceposts. He installs these birdhouses in public spaces with an accompanying yard sign, which invites viewers to donate wood or request a birdhouse for a location near them, creating a network of crowdsourced, manmade bird habitats.

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