jardín bótanico teléfono
Vallarta Botanical Garden — 2022 Garden of Excellence Award — American Public Garden Association

Our Lady of the Garden Chapel

IMAGE CREDIT: Detail from the artwork installation, Los Angelitos de Nuestra Señora del Jardín . Custom made wallcovering, archival watercolor inks printed onto natural fabrics. Dimensions variable. David Allen Burns and Austin Young / Fallen Fruit, 2021.

Los Angelitos de Nuestra Señora del Jardín David Allen Burns and Austin Young / Fallen Fruit, 2021

A permanent installation artwork made of original photographs on archival watercolor inks printed onto natural fabrics.

This modern day fresco, created specifically for the chapel, is made from hundreds of photographs taken by the artists at the Vallarta Botanical Gardens at different times of year. The artist also sourced historic lithographs of indigenous hummingbirds by Mexican botanist, Rafael Montes de Oca and English ornithologist John Gould. The title, “Los Angelitos…,” is in honor of the hummingbirds and pollinators, the little angels, that dance around the chapel. The extraordinary flora and fauna naturalized by this exotic setting is embellished into the interior spaces of the chapel and contextualized by never ending merging color fields. The frame for the art is the building itself; the wall behind the altar represents daytime, and the opposite wall represents night. When standing in the middle of the chapel, you are within a rainbow. It is very likely that you will discover some of the same plants in bloom around the garden if you look carefully.

#fallenfruit #VBGardens @Fallen_Fruit @VBgardens

David Allen Burns and Austin Young work began working collaboratively on a project called Fallen Fruit* that originated in Los Angeles by creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property. The work of Fallen Fruit includes photographic portraits, experimental documentary videos, and site-specific installation artworks. Using fruit (and public spaces and public archives) as a material for interrogating the familiar, Fallen Fruit investigates interstitial urban spaces, bodies of knowledge, and new forms of citizenship. From protests to proposals for utopian shared spaces, Fallen Fruit’s work aims to reconfigure the relationship of sharing and explore understandings of what is considered both — public and private. From their work, the artists have learned that “fruit” is symbolic and that it can be many things; it’s a subject and an object at the same time it is aesthetic. Much of the work they create is linked to ideas of place and generational knowledge, and it echoes a sense of connectedness with something very primal – our capacity to share the world with others. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. 

An installation artwork created by the artists specifically for the Vallarta Botanical Gardens. This unique asynchronous fabric wall covering sources materials from hundreds of original photographs taken by the artists in the gardens at different times of year — as well as historic watercolors and lithographs by Mexican botanist, Rafael Montes de Oca and English ornithologist John Gould, respectively. Orchids and hummingbirds dance around the interior spaces, intermixed with seasonal favorites from the botanical garden’s collection. The extraordinary flora and fauna naturalized by this exotic setting is permanently embellished into the interior spaces of the chapel and contextualized by never ending merging color fields.

Artists’ notes for guests: