Public Water

More Art’s public art commission by Mary Mattingly was a multiform project and installation that brought attention to New York City’s intricate drinking water system and the communities who steward upstate watersheds and drinking water sources. With this project Mattingly emphasized the human care that goes into having access to clean water and called for more reciprocal relationships among our neighboring communities and the planet. The project included a digital campaign, education initiatives, and a large-scale, public sculpture installation which took place June 3 – September 7, 2021 at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. In addition, to keep this essential conversation going with park visitors into the future, the Prospect Park Alliance commissioned Mattingly and More Art to produce a walking tour through the Park’s watershed, designed in connection with the launch of ecoWEIR, a natural filtration pilot project for the Park’s manmade watercourse. Read more about the audio tour, Waterways and Woodlands, below.

Download the press release

Sculpture

The sculpture, titled Watershed Core, a 10ft tall geodesic dome, was designed as a structural ecosystem covered in native plants that filter water in a gravity-fed system that mimics the geologic features of the watershed. “Watershed Core is an active sculpture that follows A Year of Public Water, a timeline recounting the building of New York City’s drinking watershed,” said Mary Mattingly. “The sculpture draws from the minerals and geologic features of the watershed to filter water. The Public Water project brings attention to New York City’s drinking water system in order to build more reciprocal exchanges between people who live in New York City’s drinking watershed and its drinking-water users in the city, to promote care and commons.”

Audio Tour

Mary Mattingly and More Art, in partnership with Prospect Park Alliance, developed Waterways and Woodlands, a free audio tour through Prospect Park powered by Gesso. Learn about the natural and human-made ecosystems found in Prospect Park, and its connection to New York City’s water supply through the layers of history, environmental stewardship, and human intervention that are hidden beneath the surface. Listen to Waterways and Woodlands here.

A Year of Public Water, Digital campaign

In 2021, More Art developed A Year of Public Water—a yearlong digital exploration including a dedicated project website and social media campaign to share information with a wider audience, to open an extended dialogue about water access, and to contextualize the project in anticipation of the sculpture’s opening. The website and digital campaign explored the long and complex history of New York City’s drinking watershed starting in geologic time and continuing through where we are today. It confronted social, political, economic issues relating to equitable access to clean water in the US, for example agricultural runoffs, regulation and control–i.e., eminent domain and rollbacks of EPA regulations–and aging infrastructure like lead pipes that contaminate drinking water, all disproportionately affecting minority and low-income communities. In doing so, it highlighted how infrastructure repairs, environmental clean-ups, and water privatization have all led to inequitable access to clean and affordable drinking water. The work also brings attention to the rarely-seen labor that humans and non-humans do to care for New York City’s drinking water. Addressing environmental, health, and economic conditions in and around New York City’s watershed is a vital precondition for the creation of a more just present and future for urban and rural New Yorkers. www.public-water.com

Education around stewardship was an essential programmatic component of PUBLIC WATER, and Mattingly and the More Art team brought the project into learning spaces.

In March 2020, More Art began a collaborative project with the AP Environmental Science (APES) class at the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics High School (BCSM), coinciding with their unit on water and land use. We held two classes in-person before shifting our work online via Zoom with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. We explored the NYC public water system and discussed issues of access, privatization, environmental stewardship, and the relationship between art, education, research, and social/environmental justice.

Working with the concept of art making as an act of stewardship, the students created art projects that aim to spark awareness of the water system, and presented them to their peers and teachers for the school’s first Virtual STEAM Night in June 2020.

PUBLIC WATER was produced by More Art in partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park Alliance, and the NYC Parks Department. An earlier version of the sculpture originally appeared as “The Parts Never Lead to the Whole” in the exhibition Stars Down to Earth: Mary Mattingly & Dario Robleto (January 13 – March 13, 2020) at the Central Library.

The project was supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support for educational programming was provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. The walking tour was a project of the Environmental Protection Fund Grant Program for Park Services Administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.