From wall to sheltered garden

Some build walls between our and their side, to defend us from the outside. Some build walls to shelter, water and nurture what they want to grow on the inside.

Building pots or sheltered gardens out of walls

The Wall as defence
The great defence wall is the ark-type of wall, a well defined line separating winners from losers, them from us, enemies from friends, good guys from bad guys. It is a classic metaphor that help us define who we are as opposed to “the others”.

The wall around growth
At the same time “the pot” seems, at least to me, as a related but different concept, where there is also a wall or barrier defining the inside, from the outside, but this metaphor is more about growing stuff, caring for and giving special attention to. When a pot is large enough, it turns into a garden, and when that grows large enough or the barrier high enough, it starts to transform itself into a wall.

Building pots out of walls, second version

Drawings and text by Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com

Illustration Keywords: community, transformation, deconstruction, activists, volunteers, growth, organic culture, feminism culture, Wall, tree pots, local, sustainable living, ecology, female, gender, perception, cognition