Lessons of a FIGMENT Sculpture Garden first-timer: (Part 1 of 2)
Katherine Gressel writes about the FIGMENT 2010 “Pallet City” project she built along with Jeremy Reed and a team of dedicated volunteers. Part 2 follows next week. Please visit the Pallet City Blog for full coverage of “Pallet City.”
Neither of us had ever done a public sculpture before. Jeremy was a trained architect. I was an arts administrator and painter who had done many community murals but had barely used a power drill.
And then, while on a summer bike outing to Governors Island in 2009, we stumbled upon the FIGMENT season-long sculpture garden. We were immediately struck by it. As Jeremy said, it was a “magical courtyard with the potential to touch anyone who wanders in.”
Pallet City: Completed installation in June 2010
So when we saw the FIGMENT 2010 call for entries a few months later, we were inspired to build a contribution of our own. Little did we know we were setting off on an exciting creative experiment.
Our project was called Pallet City and by the time it was done, it had raised important questions and taught us a lot about participatory public art. Here is our story, along with a few things you might want to consider if you’re thinking of building an interactive public art project:
The Seed of an Idea: I think it’s important to stay true to your own artistic self even when making art for the public participation of hundreds of thousands. If you’re going to devote tons of volunteered time and energy, to borrow a phrase from Creative Time, you have to have some kind of “burning question.”
It might be something that you have been grappling with for years, or something more recent, but you have to want to do everything you can to answer that question and get your audience/participants involved in answering it too.
If you are not that excited about it, you can not expect your volunteers and audiences to get excited about it (and participate) either.
The Project is Born: For me and Jeremy, our burning question evolved from our experiences in building with recycled shipping pallets, beginning with a show I curated, called “Brooklyn Utopias?”
An Internet search showed us many creative and practical uses for shipping pallets.
For the show, Jeremy and a few other architects designed big artwork display towers and seats made of pallets. After seeing the art at FIGMENT, we wondered, what else could we do with pallets?
Transporting 90+ recycled shipping pallets to FIGMENT Terrace on Governors Island
Jeremy’s initial thought was to do something fun to educate the public about the hundreds of thousands of pallets that are thrown away every day in the New York City area.*
Approximately 40% of all hardwood harvested in the U.S. is for making shipping pallets, with 2/3 of them used only once before being discarded. So our motivation was partly about demonstrating sustainable building practices.
Considering the “world’s fair” theme of FIGMENT, and Governors Island’s process of re-inventing itself as a city-within-a-city, we started to wonder how we could also use pallets to express ideas of an “urban Utopia.”
Making the Most of the Idea: This brings up another guideline for planning a participatory public art project: don’t just settle for the seed of a concept. Water it, trim it, then coax it to its fullest growth so its wide branches can reach people on multiple levels.
Art aficionados should be able to recognize a strong thematic intent just as much as small children should want to play and interact with a project, and hopefully people will be moved both aesthetically and intellectually through the experience.
The Project Evolves: Jeremy and I first thought about simply building a bunch of new shipping pallet display cubes or seating modules for FIGMENT. But then we started sketching a single, fluid skyline and it struck us: why not build an entire city out of pallets?
Original hand-drawn concept sketch for "Pallet City," by Jeremy Reed
And thus Pallet City was born, and we unknowingly embraced the true spirit of FIGMENT: imagine the craziest, most impossible thing you can do, and then go out and do it!
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*For more information on Reuse and Recycling in NYC: Official DSNY site here
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Next Week in “Lessons of a FIGMENT Sculpture Garden first-timer Part 2“:
- Planning a City:
- Pallet City Comes Alive:
- The Challenges of Participation:
- The Aesthetics of Participation:
- Final Thoughts:
About the Author & Artist: Katherine Gressel is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. She has shown her paintings and interactive public art installations at the Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Artists Gym, and City Without Walls in Newark. She is a recipient of the 2008 Abbey Mural Fellowship at the National Academy, and a 2009 CEC ArtsLink travel grant to paint community murals in Krasnoyarsk and St. Petersburg, Russia. She currently works as a muralist/teaching artist with STARR, Inc. and Kentler International Drawing Space/Red Hook Community Justice Center, and serves as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn. See more of her work at www.katherinegressel.com
About the Artist: Jeremy Reed received his MA in Architecture from the City College of New York and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from the University. He is a LEED accredited professional, active in the AIA, and sits on the board of the CCNY Architecture Alumni Association. He currently works as a practicing architect for Morris Adjmi Architects, and previously worked at Richard Dattner Architects. He served as an editor for the recently updated Fifth Edition of the AIA Guide to the New York City and has held adjunct teaching positions in Architecture History at City College. See more of his work at www.reedjeremy.com.
[...] City” project she built along with Jeremy Reed and a team of dedicated volunteers. See here for part 1. Please visit the Pallet City Blog for full coverage of “Pallet [...]