Above: CORD volunteers install Scarring Our Water on "Pallet City" at Figment
on Governors Island, 6/27/2010.
Above: Scarring Our Water hangs on "Pallet City" at Figment on Governors Islandawaiting a coming text 6/27/2010.
Above: CORD volunteers transport Scarring Our Water to Figment Sculpture Park
on Governors Island 6/27/2010.
Yesterday, June 27th, CORD/Coalition for Respectful Development volunteers joined artist/activist, Triada Samaras, (a co-founder of CORD), on Pallet City at
Figment Sculpture Exhibition on Governors Island to install a new art work, Scarring Our Water, co-created by Triada Samaras, and fellow community engaged artist, Susan Handler Konvit.
Pallet City is an interactive public art project made almost entirely from recycled shipping pallets by the artistic team of Katherine Gressel and Jeremy Reed.
Samaras and Handler Konvit created Scarring Our Water in the context of two recent events:
(1) the Superfund Designation for the Gowanus Canal by the EPA, (See NY Times) and the EPA plan for the comprehensive Gowanus Canal clean-up;
(2) the subsequent MOMA/Museum of Modern Art/exhibition: Rising Currents: Projects for New York City's Waterfronts, that baffled Handler Konvit and Samaras with a depiction of an idealized Gowanus Canal useage that that seemed not to take into full account the disturbing science of the actual canal water, banks, riverbed, and nearby, highly polluted lands.
CORD, has been a vocal supporter of the Gowanus Canal Superfund Designation and a comprehensive Gowanus Canal clean-up by the EPA, joining many other Brooklyn coalitions in these efforts. The Gowanus Canal water runs into the Gowanus Bay and out to Governors Island where it joins the East River, and later, the Hudson River.
Samaras and Handler Konvit co-created, "Scarring Our Water", a mixed media piece made from recycling materials that names many of the chemicals currently contaminating our NYC waterways, including, but not limited to those found in the Gowanus Canal, and their potential, disastrous health effects.
SCARRING OUR WATER will be part of the exhibition:
"Found on Governors Island"
July 2-August 6
Six artists respond to the idea of a shipping pallet gallery by exhibiting other work made with found and recycled materials, also addressing questions of the Ideal City as related to the future and history of Governors Island. Link: http://palletcityproject.
Previously, Handler and Samaras collaborated on another community- engaged art projects in New York City: one, an "airborne contaminants" mask workshop with local teens. (See Toxic Gowanus Canal: Local Teens Create 'Airborne Contaminants Masks').
Other links on the "Air Contaminant Masks" project with the teens at Starting Artists below: http://www.brooklynpaper.com/
