Tags: art

Another fun competition: FlyNY, in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, is hosting an international kite design contest. Participants will get to show off their aspiring designs and fly their kites on Saturday, May 9th on Pier I on the Hudson River. 

The first issue of LANDFILL, a new annual publication, features photos of first-person narratives being buried at locations around the five boroughs of New York.  Like PostSecret, but uplifting and signed, and with a physical component in the natural landscape.

To celebrate National Poetry Month this April, we’re inviting folks to share ideas, impressions, experiences, and thoughts of Freshkills Park – in Haiku form.  A Haiku is a type of poem written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, for a total of 17 syllables:

Soft fields green expanse
Undulating horizon
Gleaming rivers meet

Prizes will be awarded to the top three winners. 

The MoMA is kicking off  a new exhibit today, “In Situ: Architecture and Landscape,” an exploration of the relationship between the built environment and its surrounding landscape.  Exhibited 20th century works of architecture and landscape will highlight  “spatial, social, and environmental aspects of human life and how they had profound reverberations in both architecture and landscape design.” 

Interdisciplinary environmental arts organization Ecoartspace has opened a physical space in Soho.  Current featured exhibit is “habitat”, an artist studio shed built of reclaimed materials.  The space will also host discussions, screenings, panels, readings and performances centering around art that concerns itself with environmental issues.

Forty years have passed since Mierle Ukeles wrote her Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!, which launched her trajectory as the premier maintenance artist in the world and ultimately led to her selection as the Percent for Art artist selected to contributed to the Freshkills Park master plan. 

FIGMENT, the arts organization partnered with the Governor’s Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC), is building a mini-golf course on Governor’s Island.  And they’re holding  a design competition for single holes, which you can enter.  Governor’s Island is an interesting project and, with FIGMENT, GIPEC has been able to keep the island enviably well programmed. 

Urban Omnibus has posted a terrific project portrait and interview video with artist George Trakas about his Newtown Creek Nature Walk in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  As a Percent for Art artist, Trakas piggybacked on the Department of Environmental Protection‘s $3 billion upgrade of the wastewater treatment facility to create a handsomely designed waterfront park/plaza where employees and locals can relax. 

This is pretty inspiring: Ohio Valley Creative Energy (OVCE) is trying to build art studios for glass, ceramics and metal work, powered by landfill gas.  They’re focused on public education about sustainability through artwork and big-idea design, and they worked with a group of art students from Meyzeek Middle school in Louisville, KY to create this stop-motion animated video demonstrating how methane gas can be used as a renewable energy source for use by arts facilities.

In 2001 the Snug Harbor Cultural Center’s Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art launched an exhibition as a response to the closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill.  19 artists and artist-teams responded with “Fresh Kills: Artists Respond to the Closure of the Staten Island Landfill,” a collection of paintings, sculpture, photographs, videos and conceptual works, some of which are directly about Fresh Kills while others deal more generally about environmental issues.

Meirle Laderman Ukeles is a Percent For Art Artist whose work will be integrated in the development of Freshkills Park. She has been the Artist-in-Residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation since 1977 and, following the ideals of her 1969 Manifesto for Maintenance Art, has executed numerous maintenance and sanitation-related artistic projects over the last 30 years. 

As regular travelers on the R train to South Ferry, we’re excited about the new South Ferry 1 train terminus (which connects to the R-W station) and the artwork that will be on display there.

On a recent sunny Friday, we took Williamsburg-based post-punk band Freshkills out on a tour of their namesake site.  Writer Jens Carstensen is friend of the band and came out on the tour with us. His account of our bleary-eyed morning is a fun read.