"A Clearing In The Streets" Courtesy of the Public Art Fund.
Collect Pond Park in Lower Manhattan was reintroduced to nature May 27th. Through the Public Art Fund, Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith designed a 15 ft. across, ten-sided structure that holds a flowering meadow. Small openings between each panel allow passersby to view the ever-changing meadow and painted mural backdrop. Whitewall spoke to Wayland-Smith about her interest in reincorporating nature to a built environment.
WHITEWALL: How was the location of Collect Pond Park chosen?
SARAH WAYLAND-SMITH: Physically it works really well. The basic idea was to reinsert a piece of nature that could have been here before the built environment. We wanted to put it in a context that was very dense with tall buildings.
Then there is the history of the park. It was a pond and a place where people came to be with nature. That got squeezed out as the neighborhood became more built up. And so it’s bringing back what was once there.
WW: The meadow inside the structure is sectioned off – you can’t walk through. Why is that?
SWS: The structure reflects a split between the built environment and the organic interior space. We wanted it to be an incasing that allowed these viewing spaces. We wanted the meadow to have it’s own space so you could watch a very different cycle of time, the plants growing, attracting birds and butterflies. It allows you to be on the outside looking in.
WW: Over time, the public will get to watch this meadow in flux. It shows the contrast between the concrete environment and nature but also makes the parallel that they are both in flux.
SWS: At very different times and speeds. It’s a much slower speed watching the grass grow, while everything in the city is spinning around in a much faster cycle. Those two cycles reveal aspects about themselves by having them juxtaposed.
WW: With “A Clearing in the Streets” there is the idea of reintroducing nature. Is part of that hoping that the public could incorporate nature into their personal lives?
SWS: We hope that it makes people think about their relationship with nature. It’s not a manicured garden. It’s supposed to be very organic. That can carry over to wanting to have plantings on their rooftop, in their building, even on a really small scale.
WW: What does it mean for you as an artist to have your work become a temporary landmark?
SWS: It’s really exciting. When we were down there doing the installation we talked to the people in the buildings around their, they wanted to come back and see it. It’s interesting to have something that is not a static object – it’s going to be constantly changing – and how that changes the relationship with the viewer. One of the things we did was put up the plant list on the structure so people have an immediate way to access it for those who don’t know about art or sculpture and want to know about the plants. Some of the considerations were different because it wasn’t just sculpture.
WW: You work part time doing landscape design at Balmori Associates and you’re an artist. How do you reintorduce nature into your life?
SWS: With my part time work I work on green roof design. Those issues are present in terms of how to bring in natural systems to counteract the negative effects of the built environment – like heat and storm water. Vegetation can absorb that, cool the city, and trap pollution. I’ve done the planter boxes in my building. Those experiences have filtered into my art work – whether my drawings, installations – those issues of landscapes and division between built environment and organic systems are interesting to me.
