Tags: art

Another poster child for the reclamation of disturbed lands: AMD&ART Park in Vintondale, PA.  By the mid-’90s, coal mining in this part of Appalachia had resulted in severe acid mine drainage (AMD) into waterways and general public resignation to a major environmental hazard. 

We recently discovered that our neighbors at the New Jersey Meadowlands keep a nature blog full of amazing photos of the bird and insect life that lives within its 8,400 acres of wetlands and open space.  Lots of these photos have been taken at the 110-acre Richard W.

An event this Saturday on Staten Island invites artists to bring leftover ideas and pieces of work to an afternoon of collaborative dada production.  Day de Dada is August 1st from 1:00 to 4:00 on Van Duzer Street between Wright and Beach Streets, Staten Island. 

Open and on view for one more week at The Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens is The University of Trash, an installation by artists Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman that functions as the backdrop for a host of lectures, workshops and events. 

The Bronx River Art Center‘s new exhibit features work by Staten Island-based artist Tattfoo Tan and Bronx-based artist Abigail DeVille.  The show is called Black Gold, a term that’s often used to describe compost, and the work–painting, sculpture, installation–circles around issues concerning the natural environment. 

This Saturday is the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance’s City of Water Day, a festival celebrating the potential of the City’s waterfront.  There will be plenty of free entertainment, education and activities, including boat tours, local bands, award-winning food vendors and lots of special children’s events.

The Waterpod is a a certified public vessel, a vegetable and chicken farm, a hodge-podge of sustainable systems (solar panels, rainwater collection, bicyle-produced electricity) and a recycled, floating home for six artists.  They’ve lived there since Saturday and call it “a floating sculptural living structure designed as a new habitat for the global warming epoch.” 

We had a great time co-hosting Tuesday night’s panel discussion on public art with the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI).  All of the panelists make exciting and engaging work, and they had a lot to say about the ways in which financing, permissions and public interaction have played into their work (or the work they curate). 

No need to be indoors to see art this summer.  Here’s a list of New York City parks playing host to a whole variety of art installations.  Pictured above is DDP 2.0 (Digital Dirt Processor) by Ethan Long, on exhibit at Rockaway Beach at 32nd Street until November 1. 

One of the panelists at next Tuesday evening’s panel discussion on public art, The Challenges and Channels of Public Art Production, is Mierle Ukeles, who is the Department of Sanitation’s Artist-in-Residence and contributed to the Freshkills Park master planning process as a Percent for Art artist. 

The upcoming week is a busy one for us.  Three terrific public events focused on different aspects of the Freshkills Park site: waste, art and ecology.  They’re all free, and we hope to see you at one or more of them. 

Andy Lubershane’s weekly series Earthly Comics works to unpack environmental topics that can be difficult to understand: walkability; pervious concrete; cellulosic ethanol.  Not the stuff of Marmaduke, but it does break some complicated ideas down into digestible chunks, and it’s pretty lighthearted.

Photographer Willie Chu took some gorgeous images of the Freshkills Park site during our incredibly foggy, early morning photographers tour in early May.  We hope we can exhibit these eventually.  We’d like to do another photographers tour in the late summer or early fall–if you’re a professional photographer who would like to participate, please let us know.

The 2009 Art by the Ferry Festival on Staten Island kicks off June 6th.  For the first two weekends in June, the Staten Island Creative Community will animate the Staten Island Museum, restaurants, and galleries in the St. George neighborhood with visual arts, crafts, spoken word and performing arts events.

On Saturday, we woke up REALLY early to take a group of professional photographers out on a tour of the Freshkills Park site and catch some prime morning light.  What we got was morning fog, at least for half the morning, but our pros still shot some interesting stuff. 

We had a great turnout for last Saturday’s reading atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site, presented by grass-roots dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD.  Attendees read aloud and listened to a passage from ‘Days Afield on Staten Island’, a lyrical exploration of Staten Island’s landscape by 19th century naturalist William T.

Our judges have voted, and the winners of the Freshkills Park haiku contest are:

Adult winners:

Seen from outer space
Freshkills undergoing change
Refresh Google Earth

-L

a park in my mind
landfill scarred islanders’ hearts
reclaimed, restored land

-Lindsay Campbell

From trash to treasure
As from rubble to ramble
We grow; we evolve

-Jessica Kratz

Youth winner:

30 Years

The fresh air, boat rides
On the swings, flying your kite
30 years be there

-Shade, Esmeralda, Alexus

Congratulations!  

Today marks the end of the Freshkills Park Haiku contest. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and inspirations of the Park by crafting a haiku. Reading the entries–over 100 of them!–was a blast, and we are looking forward to announcing the winners on Monday. 

Spring marks the beginning of the Freshkills Park tour season.  The tours are a chance to share the vision of Freshkills Park with the public and sometimes a prompt for the public to share its thoughts about the site with us. 

The construction industry produces an estimated 164 million tons of building-related waste per year, making it the single largest contributor to landfills in the US–about 20% of stateside landfill waste is construction debris.  Worldchanging reports that do-it-yourself enthusiasts in England are testing a new business model that would reclaim almost 12% of England’s construction waste by reselling materials at ”ReIY’ (Reuse It Yourself) centers.