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26/5/2009

Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith

Collect Pond Park, USA

This spring, amidst downtown Manhattan's concrete and asphalt, a flowering meadow will begin to grow. A temporary landscape designed by Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith, A Clearing in the Streets, is a new installation commissioned by the Public Art Fund. A ten-sided plywood structure located at Collect Pond Park will house a meadow, fifteen feet in diameter, offset by a panoramic interior mural of a vast blue sky. Eight-inch gaps spaced throughout the structure permit a controlled visual access to the enclosed landscape, exaggerating the disjunction between the natural ecology growing inside and the architecturally defined exterior. The structure and limited viewing opportunities magnify the natural cyclical processes of the ecology that, over a four month period, will evolve from seeds and seedlings to a lush meadow of flowering native plants and grasses.

The built environment of New York City has almost completely effaced the opportunities for natural systems to exist. Collect Pond Park was once a 60-foot-deep freshwater pond; misused and polluted in the 19th century, the pond had to be drained. A Clearing in the Streets allows nature to reclaim a small part of the current public plaza, carving out a space to reinsert native plantings. The meadow will be in a constant state of transformation, parallel to the flux and endless change of the City itself. This literal 'work in progress' invites the public to return to the installation and witness its evolution.

Farris, a landscape designer, and Wayland-Smith, an artist and landscape designer, are committed to finding innovative ways to incorporate the natural world into the urban environment. Thinking beyond the traditional landscape, their interest lies in exploring temporary uses of the City's small available spaces, adding living materials which can be enjoyed for one growing season and then recycled or reconfigured at another site. A Clearing in the Streets is an example of this approach; materials used in the construction of this project will be recycled in neighborhood community gardens.

About the Artists

Julie Farris was born in 1968 in New York City; she lives and works in New York City. Farris received her BA from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and her MLA from Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Farris' work focuses on the potential for small forgotten spaces throughout the city to become verdant, sustainable, inexpensive and aesthetic landscapes for urban residents. In 2005, she founded her own studio, XS Space LLC, and completed a temporary landscape/multi-media installation entitled Temporary Landscape: A Pasture for Urban Space. In 2007, she worked in collaboration with Balmori Associates and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to complete an 8,000 square foot public space, Urban Meadow, which is now a permanent park located in downtown Brooklyn.

Sarah Wayland-Smith was born in 1969 in Western Pennsylvania; she lives and works in New York City. She received her BA from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Wayland-Smith's sculptural installations and works on paper explore our complex desire to manipulate and frame nature. For the past decade, she has worked as a designer for Maya Lin Studio and the landscape and urban design firm, Balmori Associates. Wayland-Smith has collaborated previously with Farris on the design of Urban Meadow in 2007. Her art has been exhibited in New York City and throughout the North East, and can be viewed on the online Viewing Program of the Drawing Center.

Location and Directions

Collect Pond Park occupies the 18th century site of Collect Pond, a large, 60-foot-deep pool, filled with water from an underground spring. Collect Pond was a favorite spot for picnics and ice-skating, but by the early 19th century the pond had become a communal open sewer. The City decided to drain the water and fill in the land. By the 1830s, the once vibrant area had become home to the notorious "Five Points," a poor and dangerous slum renowned for its crime and filth. The now revived neighborhood, surrounded by government buildings, is known as Civic Center.

Collect Pond Park
Leonard Street between Centre and Lafayette Streets.
Subway: J, M, Z, N, Q, R, W, 6 to Canal Street.
A Clearing in the Streets is free and on view daily.

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