Author: Art Education

Native Woodland Garden
Location: 70 Washington Square South
Bobst Library
MAP
Access: Public

ABOUT THE LOCATION
The NYU Native Woodland Garden in Schwartz Plaza on the east face of Bobst Library. Designed by Darrel Morrison, he used the plant list supplied by the Mannahatta Project which reconstructed the ecology of Manhattan island. The garden features species of plants believed to have been on Manhattan island before European settlement began in 1609.

The garden was first planted in 2009 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson in New York Harbor. This is an ongoing educational project which has taught us which natives work (and which do not work) in our densely urban environment.  

View Floor Plan 
View Native Plants List

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ARTISTS 2019

Lu Rose Biltucci, BFA 2018
Zaq Landsberg , BFA 2007
Lara Saget and Jerry J. Adams (Collaboration), MFAs 2018

Lu Rose Biltucci is an artist and scholar with many questions on their mind. Their work leans towards healing, and seeks to undo knots of ecological and cultural histories to defy the supposed scarcity of our present and dream of possible futures. They hold a BFA from NYU.

A series of handwoven nets, ceramic hands, and oyster shells make up Lu’s sculptures in Sessile Nets. Oysters are a growing presence in the waters surrounding New York City, reclaiming space that European colonization denied them by centuries of overharvesting and dredging of their homes. As their resurgence swells, it is evermore important to attend to their histories in these waters. Called sessile organisms, meaning fixed or immobile, oysters have been living in the waters surrounding these lands for thousands of years. The word “sessile” betrays the oysters’ way of being in the world as lower, less awake. Sessile Nets instead asks how oysters’ capacity for filtration makes them a beacon for learning how to let the world move around us and filter out only what we might need from the passing flow. Nets display the shells and ceramic hands compliment the oysters, both pieces serving as symbols aligned with the oysters in their capacity for holding and filtering. An oyster’s power lies in it’s fixed position—holding on for future generations by growing on the shells of oysters past, and the futures of other life by forming monumental reefs capable of shielding coastal land and life from strong storms.

Zaq Landsberg specializes in large scale, site-specific sculptures, absurd objects and potentially treasonous conceptual projects. Solo exhibitions include; Nuevo Museo Energía de Arte Contemporáneo, (Buenos Aires), CUAC (Salt Lake City), chashama (New York City) at pehrspace (Los Angeles). Group exhibitions include; Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens), Franconia Sculpture Park, (Shafer), Museo del Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, (Buenos Aires). He was awarded a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Sculpture, in 2017 and the Art in the Parks: UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant in 2018. He was born in Los Angeles, CA and holds a BFA from New York University.

The Stonecutters Memorial commemorates the Stonecutters Riot of 1833 and is a counter-memorial to The Founders’ Memorial, which stands in Schwartz Plaza. The Stonecutters Riot, was a response to the University Council’s decision to source stone for the then new University Building from Sing Sing, where it was prepared by prisoners. After petitioning to no avail, local stonecutters and marble workers formed a mob and stormed after building contractors. The City called out the National Guard to put down the riot.

This piece will consist of many hands, rising from the garden and the soil, some with stone cutting tools, some in clenched fists to represent how this labor action is intertwined with the history of the University. The story the Founders Monument is not complete, without the story of the working men, who saw no choice, but to act to protect their livelihoods. The hands will be cast in mycelium, the bonding elements of fungi, so the counter-memorial will eventually bio-degrade. The fact that they will break down over the course of the show is a metaphor for the dense, layered, and oftentimes problematic, history all over Washington Square Park area.

PROJECTS ON VIEW MAY – DECEMBER 2019

 

Native Woodland Garden
Location: 70 Washington Square South
Bobst Library
MAP
Access: Public

APPLICATIONS DUE MARCH 11