TVs Among the Tomatoes

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Caption: ‘I guess it’s a negative statement about television,’ Alison Ulman said of the partially buried TV sets in her garden.

TVs Among the Tomatoes

By Steve Rubenstein

San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, September 15, 1984, Front Page, lead photo story, 34.5 column inches, 120th year Number 209

Alison Ulman of San Francisco had some room left over in her garden, next to the tomatoes and parsley. She planted 12 television sets.

“I needed to do something with the space,” she said. “I couldn’t just leave it empty.”

Ulman, 29, is what some people would call a conceptual artist. As in the case of the garden full of televisions, the concept is not often easy to grasp.

“I guess it’s a statement about television,” Ulman said yesterday, appearing to consider the matter for the first time. “I don’t know. I guess it’s a negative statement about TV. There are a lot of crummy shows on TV. If you’re going to interpret it, you’d have to call it negative, probably.”

The televisions are in three rows of four, just behind the tomatoes. There are Zeniths, RCAs, and Motorolas. Most have weeds growing out of them.

“It’s just as difficult to take care of television sets as tomatoes,” Ulman said. “You have to weed them just as often.”

Ulman got the sets for free from the...

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TV GARDEN ON ART TOUR

...house of a TV repairman who died. All she had to do was haul them away in her pickup truck.

“I think they were mostly broken, but one time we plugged in one of the sets and got a white line across the screen that was kind of pretty,” she said.

It’s a dangerous thing to ask a conceptual artist why she does something, even if the question begs to be asked. In general, Ulman seems motivated by the same instincts that moved a Texas artist to plant 10 Cadillacs in the ground near Amarillo in 1974.

“Why did I plant the TVs?” she said. “Let’s see. It’s a good use of space. It is satisfying. Art is supposed to satisfy. You can’t just plant anything in a garden. You have to pick the right things.”

Ulman, a former carpenter and freelance hauler, has been making conceptual art in her Visitacion Valley home for several years. There are rocks hanging from fishing poles in the back yard, shelves full of cement-covered books in the bedroom, and two recently acquired stretchers in the kitchen she has not yet decided what to do with.

“I’m going to let them sit around the kitchen until something comes to me,” she said. “Maybe I’ll make them into an African Shrine, or something.”

Ulman is one of about 150 San Francisco artists whose homes and studios will be open to the public during the annual Open Studio Exhibition, sponsored by the San Francisco Art Commission. The idea is to get art lovers to drop by the studios of the city’s more promising or more impoverished artists, look around, and buy something.

Photo Credit: John O’Hara

© San Francisco Chronicle, 1984

San Francisco Chronicle Front Page

© Alison Ulman 2003