Tags: art

On January 16, 2014, Freshkills Park Alliance signed a twin park agreement with Ariel Sharon Park (built on the former Hiriya landfill) in Tel Aviv. This agreement recognizes the similar challenges and opportunities that the two transformative projects face as urban landfill-to-park conversions.

Freshkills Park CELEBRATES National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month which means it is time for the fifth annual Freshkills Park Haiku Contest!  We will be celebrating by asking you to share your impressions, experiences, thoughts and ideas of what Freshkills Park is, will be, and what it means to you- in haiku form.

Ripley’s Believe it or Not Odditorium in Times Square is hosting a contest titled “Materials Matter Amazing Art Challenge” for New York City art students. The submissions for the contest are due in April and selected students will have their work exhibited at Ripley’s.

An upcoming documentary entitled Landfill Harmonic chronicles the work of Favio Chavez, who is using trash to inspire his local community in Cateura, Paraguay.  The documentary follows Chavez, landfill technician and director of the appropriately named Recycled Orchestra, as he constructs musical instruments made of trash sourced directly from the landfill.  

If you’ve been to Sneak Peak, perhaps you’ve noticed your own reflection in the side of a Department of Sanitation garbage truck.

This 20 cubic-yard garbage truck faced with hand-tempered mirror is The Social Mirror by artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The Social Mirror debuted in the grand finale of the first NYC Art Parade in 1983 and was most recently exhibited at the 2007 Armory Show.

This Saturday, July 28, the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) will be holding an exclusive sneak preview of the submissions to the 2012 LAGI NYC design competition for Freshkills Park. You’ll learn all about renewable energy technologies, land art and public art, and even design your own energy-generating public artwork.

For more than 20 years, Department of Sanitation New York City worker Nelson Molina has curated a collection…of trash. Call it a gallery, a collection, or a museum, Molina and other Sanitation workers have transformed an unused room in an Upper East Side sanitation facility, located on 99th Street between First and Second Avenues, into a showplace for found art in collected trash.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) will be holding a FREE public event at 105 Water Street, Staten Island on Saturday, July 28th. Visitors will have a chance to preview the site-specific submissions to the 2012 LAGI NYC design competition, while also learning more about the interaction between renewable energy technologies, land art and public art.

On September 15, 2012,  the Museum of the City of New York will inaugurate an exhibition entitled From Farm to City: Staten Island 1661-2012. Through the display of a treasure trove of maps, photographs and objects, the exhibit will explore Staten Island’s rich 351 year history and it’s transformation from a rural to urban landscape.

‘Renewable energy can be beautiful.’ That is the tagline for the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI)  international design competition. The open LAGI competition calls for ideas to “design a site-specific public artwork that also functions as clean energy infrastructure for New York City.”

It is time to announce the winners of our fourth annual Freshkills Park Haiku Contest! April was National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, we asked fans of Freshkills Park to submit a haiku inspired by the park.  We split the entries into two categories, Adult and Youth, and our judges selected three Adult winners and two Youth winners.

April is National Poetry Month which means it is time for the fourth annual Freshkills Park Haiku Contest!  We will be celebrating by asking you to share your impressions, experiences, thoughts and ideas of what Freshkills Park is, will be, and what it means to you- in haiku form.

In an attempt to draw attention to the dearth of greenspace and poor air quality in the region, the nonprofit VerdMX has constructed three ecostructures throughout Mexico City. One such structure is a vertical garden of over 50,000 plants.

Formerly notorious for its poor air quality, Mexico City is now an example of successful campaigns by policy makers, environmentalists, and various other groups to improve the city’s air.

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 have announced NYC-based design firm HWKN as the winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP). The eye-popping project, titled Wendy, is composed of nylon fabric treated with a nano-particle spray that will neutralize airborne pollutants.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) team recently announced the release of their Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies, a free resource they hope will prove useful to “all designers, homeowners, urban planners, students, artists, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and anyone else interested in a clean energy future”.

This Saturday evening a demonstration of PARK, the ever-evolving performance language developed through fieldwork conducted at Freshkills Park by choreographer Kathy Westwater, will take place as part the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference at the Gibney Dance Center in Manhattan.

Applications for the 2012 Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award—an annual award granted by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to one emerging artist for an outdoor sculpture in a City park—are due this Friday, January 6.  The selected artist will receive a grant of $7,000 to exhibit his or her artwork in Joyce Kilmer Park, in the Bronx, for a maximum of one year.

This Saturday, members of the community dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD, will be reading from the writings of Sandra Cisneros at Freshkills Park. Cisneros is a leading American writer, whose works highlight the urban, Latina-American experience. Excerpts from works including The House on Mango Street will be read in English and Spanish from the top of North Mound, against spectacular views of Staten Island and the Manhattan skyline.

At last year’s Sneak Peak we were lucky enough to get Mierle Laderman Ukeles‘ iconic mirrored garbage truck, ‘The Social Mirror’ to feature prominently as a preview of public art to come in the future park.  This year, we’re able to deliver a little bit more of that future with a total of 15 art installations throughout the event site, curated with the assistance of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI). 

Once you work up an appetite kayaking, biking and touring the site at Sneak Peak, make sure to stop by the food vendors for an assortment of tasty grub.  We will have the Vendy Award-winning King of Falafel and Shawarma, Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza, and Killmeyer’s Old Bavaria Inn serving up savory fare as well as The Treats Truck, Staten Island Iceman, and Nonie Chu’s Pastries with sweet treats.