In the contemporary art world Dian Marino is not a name that stands out. In the world of art education, however, she is a maverick for turning passivity into resistance and building verbal expression into visual art. Marino died of cancer in 1993 but her teachings remain an important contribution to community-based art production. Most of her work was done at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies and her methods are now practiced around the world.

Wild Garden is a guide to Marino’s thought processes and her determination to splinter social hierarchies through creativity. Hegemony was never a topic Marino felt she could easily resolve by finding an exact teaching method that could be executed with infallible repetition. Her own concerns as a teacher were never completely resolved, and she saw this as one of her greater gifts. Exposing her vulnerabilities along with her students was not a failure, but a good sign that a learning shift was occurring.

Wild Garden extracts some of her main theories. Re:framing, for instance, is a term she uses to find ways of switching one perspective (accepting oppression) to another (discovering “counter hegemony”) by reinterpreting signs. Among her examples is a course she taught as part of a women’s outreach program. Recognizing that many of her students were informed primarily by television, she used soap operas as a tool. In small groups, Marino would help her students dissect the roles that women in soaps act out and then re-evaluate the dominant soap message – that women in need are always rescued by a male saviour. The group’s discussions turned to ways of “re:framing” social codes by comparing television fantasies to real experiences, which, inevitably, did not include saviours waiting around the corner. The project became an exercise in self-awareness and was dubbed “As the World Really Turns.”

Mixed in with Marino’s theories, Wild Garden includes a number of her lessons, called Hands On. Short descriptions are given as guides to encourage discussion and equal participation. They read more as crib notes than how-to instructions with a distinctively open approach. Marino was extremely conscious of avoiding language and activities that might pigeon-hole interpretation. Even her leftist political beliefs, while clearly present, do not turn into potentially alienating personal crusades. As Marino did in her classroom, Wild Garden allows for multiple ways of putting her theories into practice. This is not a book about art. It is about discovering ways to take action.