Portraits of NYC
Portraits of NYC, is a survey of the microbiology that inhabit NYC waterways.
For the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency on Governors Island (August-December 2012), I built 5 steel and glass frames to hold mud and water from polluted waterways to create evolving portraits of NYC. Each frame includes mud from one of the following: Hudson River (PCBs), Gowanus Canal (heavy metals), Deadhorse Bay (exposed landfill), East River (raw sewage), Newtown Creek (oil spill). Bacteria photosynthesize pigments and create a transforming colorfield as defined by the physical and chemical conditions of each water:mud sample. As one species exhausts its preferred resources and dies out, another species thrives on the waste products of its predecessor. Transition of color indicates ecological succession of microfauna colonizing New York City.
15"x15"x2", 5 frames for 5 waterways
Steel, glass, silicone, eggs, newspaper, chalk and mud from each waterway (Gowanus Canal, East River, Deadhorse Bay, Hudson River, Newtown Creek)
New York City Harbor
Can you find 4 of the 5 sites?
East River side of Governor’s Island
Dead Horse Bay
Gowanus Canal
Newtown Creek
The mud flat on the Hudson is North of this map.
Superstorm Sandy hit NYC during my LMCC swingspace residency. As a result we missed about a month of access to Governor’s Island as workers cleared Cargo containers and other flotsam and jetsam off the Island. Grateful to Araby Kelley for editing.