Ideas for Ecology project

My first Idea involved an excerpt from the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, because how close to tree hugging can ya get. I thought about utilizing a friend of mines knack at photographing action figures in real life like situations out in nature but instead of action figures I would make beans with arms and legs. If you are familiar with Thoreau you know he loved his beans and what the meant to him.

My second idea which I'm pretty set on at this point is inspired by Andy Goldsworthy. I knew I wanted to go into nature and use that to make a piece somehow but then I thought how could I make it a bit different from his work. Well I enjoy painting but I didn't want to slap acrylic or oil paint on trees because that defeats the purpose of the piece. Rather I got my solution from work, I work at Earthfare in the Juice Bar/Bakery section and I realized how potent the color in certain vegetable juices were. So I'm able to get a solid red color from beets, vivid orange from carrots and with a mix of kale, spinach, and possibly spirulina, I'll be able to have a bright green. I may also utilize some tumeric to make a yellow but I'm not sure yet. My main problem I will have to get around is what I use as a canvas, hopefully certain trees will have light enough bark so you can notice the dye. One of the bakers had a good idea in that I use some flour to actually make a dye-paste so it's easier to manipulate and more noticeable on certain objects like a rock per say.

I intend to post the process shots before presentation and hopefully if I can get away with it at work images of the actual juicing.