By Amy Franceschini
San Francisco: Gallery 16 Editions, 2008
Pages: 102
Dimensions: 8.25" x 11.25"
Cover: hardback
Binding: perfect bound
Process: digital
Color: full color
Edition size: 1000
ISBN 978-0-9777442-6-8

This beautifully produced book is full of lush images of gardens, specially designed tools, and the optimistic aesthetic that fans of the Future Farmers (a group of artists Franceschini is regularly active with) know and love. One always expects great design to come from Amy and the Future Farmers, and this book won't disappoint.

"Victory Gardens 2007+" chronicles Amy Franceschini's inspired reimagining of the original wartime Victory Garden program. There are several amazing reproductions of the posters made at that time to encourage people to start their own victory gardens; one incredible poster shows a bunch of root vegetables that are bombs falling upon a swastika, clearly representing the connection between producing food and defeating the Nazis.

The book features essays by Lucy Lippard and Mike Davis along with historical photos and context, and project documentation and insight.

Franceschini's Victory Gardens 2007+ was presented as a series of actions, sculptural icons, and ephemera during the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Award show in January of 2007. The project was initially a small pilot program designed to evolve into a larger plan for a city supported food system. The goal was to create a community of food producers through public outreach and education.

In her introduction in the book Franceschini explains, "I worked idealistically with the hope that a practical program would form; one that could be implemented, practiced, and maintained - and it has. This project is both artwork and democracy in action. It is another reminder that grassroots efforts engage and mobilize communities and tune government to create change. This city IS ours!...I hope the information in this book will pay homage to a past, present, and future of food production within cities."

Read what others have to say:

Franceschini’s work melds activism, graphic design and community organizing. And gardening. For her Victory Gardens 2007 project, she created a system for San Franciscans to seed their own gardens in backyards, rooftops, and vacant lots through the help of seed banks, training, materials, and the ancillary publicity her art can bring. (Her pogo shovel, a Duchamp-meets-Beuys symbol of the fun of gardening, could be seen as emblematic of the project’s goal of connecting pragmatism and play.) (READ MORE...)
- "Pogoshovels and Victory Gardens," by Paul Schmelzer, Off Center: Outside ideas from inside the Walker

I first became aware of the WWII Victory Garden program in Laura Lawson's City Bountiful: A History of Community Gardening in America. The program was initiated in 1941 by the Office of Civilian Defense in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture. During a national garden conference a guide for the Victory Garden Program was produced and distributed to cities across the country. Between 1941 and 1943 there were 20 million Victory Gardens and 41% of our total food was being produced in Victory Gardens.(READ MORE...)
- Amy Franceschini, in an interview with Christina Ulke of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest