A new sculptural work exploring our relationship to Southern ecosystems and the shifting nature of topography and natural resource lines. The work is created in close collaboration with social practice artist and curator Janelle Dunlap, architect and street art producer Keif Schleifer, and musician and composer Kebbi Williams.

The installation features stallings’ 20-foot amphibious living sculpture titled P.M, fabricated on-site in response to the park’s unique waterfront location along Bear Creek on its way to the Chattahoochee River. This deck structure, which includes blooming edible plants, reaches from the shore out across the creek, and was made out of reclaimed stacking materials and lumber pieces. The garden uses a bio-filtration system to clean the creek. The filter itself is the garden on its surface, a reminder of a life support system, and the delicate nature of how the smallest movements support balanced ecosystems.

The work includes a sound installation by Williams of atmospheric rhythms and a pulsating hum—similar to the flow of water. Williams aims to reflect on how similar we are to water and how it breathes just like we do—if we only decide to listen to it. Dunlap has reimagined a recycled parachute into a large canopy, suspended along a trail where it bends towards the creek, in bird’s eye view of the garden. Dunlap is concerned with ideas around re-establishment, and acts of doing with intention with the earth (cooling). Since winter, the artists have been working with Schleifer and her wonderfully talented School of Architecture, Kennesaw State University accelerated track students, co-imagining the elements of the dock structure.

The nomadic themes and project’s name reference stallings great-grandfather of the same name. P.M. Barefoot was a small-time gardener raised in North Carolina near the Lumbee River, a descendant of the Lumbee Tribe, who migrated South and helped raise the artist’s momma and her three sisters. So Barefoot Island came out of a need to continue connecting with and relying upon the South’s waterways and public land in order to better care for it, and by proximity, for each other.

Barefoot Island is made possible, in part, by support from the Nexus Fund, Atlanta Contemporary, with regional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Barefoot Island is supported by Cochran Mill Park, and in collaboration with the Parks Commission, with support from the Mayor’s Office, City of Chattahoochee Hills. Barefoot Island and public initiatives are made possible by logistical, site support of glo platform.