Freshkills Park Blog

The four-day Reclaimed Lands Conference brought together researchers, practitioners, planners, ecologists, artists, designers, community groups, and students to bridge the gaps between disciplines and productively explore the issues and initiatives surrounding these post-industrial reclaimed landscapes. With field trips and panels at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU Tisch, participants discussed topics like monitoring changes in biodiversity, designing ecologically sustainable re-development, engaging residents in stewardship, and transforming public perceptions.

Compelled by alternative functions, artist Bill Jenkins’ practice reconstitutes utilitarian objects and places. In the exhibition Image/Conduit, currently on view at the Freshkills Park Studio + Gallery, he investigates this curiosity through the topography of Freshkills Park.

The exhibition features video work titled Scans, investigating the relationship between decades of compressed garbage placed at Fresh Kills with the picturesque grassy hills that compose the landscape of Freshkills Park.

Work by several artists will be installed and realized at Freshkills Park this summer as part of the art-research project Field R/D. This phase of the expansive and collaborative project is made possible thanks to a Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation Art and Social Justice Initiative grant award.

Late summer and early fall are great times to visit Freshkills Park! As the park is built in phases, tours and events offer opportunities to explore sections of the site before they open. Whether kayaking the creeks, photographing the landscape, or hiking and bicycling along miles of meadows, these programs invite visitors to experience and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Urban Omnibus, Freshkills Park, and the jury panel are pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Urban Wild Writer Residency. This residency seeks to bring a first-hand perspective to topics that include the environment, technology, urban life, nature, and waste.

The wide, open grasslands of Freshkills Park serve as an important habitat to a variety of wildlife. One species that depends on these areas is the American kestrel – the smallest member of the falcon family. These birds nest inside cavities of isolated trees scattered throughout open fields, and feed by swooping down to capture prey among the grasses such as large insects or small animals.

What better way to explore Freshkills Park than with an artist-led drawing workshop in a shipping container?

Freshkills Park is currently home to Fastnet, a shipping container converted into a studio and project space. The container was purchased by artist James Powers in 2015.

A small Bodega coffee, a bagel with scallion cream cheese, and a leftover pizza slice. This may sound like the delicious lunch of a New Yorker, but we often forget that our everyday treasures are lined with what we consider trash.

This summer, Freshkills Park is offering creative workshops about plants at the Greenbelt Nature Center. Using art as a platform, these workshops will engage participants in exploring the importance of native plants, as well as the relationships between native and invasive plants, in relation to the Freshkills Park project.

“It was one of those days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”  ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

The briskness and overcast skies on Sunday, June 3 proved to be invigorating for the hundreds of enthusiastic visitors who attended Discovery Day throughout the event.

Caitlyn Simon is an Environmental Science Intern for Freshkills Park. She was born and raised in NYC and lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn when she is not attending Amherst College in Massachusetts. She is a rising senior double-majoring in Environmental Studies and Geology.

Summer is a great season for birdwatching! As the weather warms up, migrating species return from their wintering grounds. Birds can be seen foraging for food, building nests, displaying for mates, and defending their territories. Sometimes you can hear them calling to mates and declaring their territories to potential rivals.

The closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill and the planting of native grasses atop the landfill cap has led to hundreds of acres of new grasslands. This offers the unusual chance to see a nascent ecosystem take shape, bringing its value as a specialized habitat with environmental benefits to the forefront.

Artist James Powers will bring plein-air landscape drawing workshops to Discovery Day on Sunday June 3. These observational drawing workshops will create a visual awareness of the landscape and foster an understanding of the consequences our actions have on the environment through discussion.

Christine Stoddard is a CUNY graduate planning fellow for the 2018 Reclaimed Lands Conference. Originally from Arlington, Virginia, she has lived in Brooklyn for two years. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Digital & Interdisciplinary Art Practice program at The City College of New York (CUNY).

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on Sunday June 3. This free event is a chance to explore normally closed areas of the park and experience the landscape and views the landfill-to-park project has to offer. Hundreds of acres and and miles of trails will be open for a day of bicycling, tours, and activities for all ages.

This spring, students from Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Learning School are visiting Freshkills Park for outdoor observational drawing workshops in Fastnet, a shipping container converted into a studio and project space. Artist James Powers purchased Fastnet in the fall of 2015. Here he reflects on “the thrill of drawing outside” and how he learned to think of the landscape “as an extension of the studio.”

Phase one of North Park will be the first section inside the Fresh Kills Landfill boundaries to open to the public, connecting visitors to spectacular views of the site’s hills and waterways. NYC Parks and NYC Sanitation broke ground on the project in July 2017.

This essay is published in Urban Omnibus. 

Of Freshkills Park’s 2,200 acres, half are now grasslands. The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) created these meadows over the last twenty years as part of the landfill “cap.” Layers of soil, geotextiles, and a plastic geomembrane have sealed off the landfill mounds, and native plants have rooted in the topsoil to help prevent erosion.

Kaitlyn Brudecki is a Science and Research Intern for the Freshkills Park project. She grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn then later moved to Middle Village, Queens. She studies Aquaculture at the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School.

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