Art at the BlueLine

Waterfront Alliance

City of Water Day

– Experience the BlueLine –

Saturday, July 15, 2023

For the third year, Art at the BlueLine will launch on City of Water Day in Lower Manhattan’s Seaport and runs through July 31. The Howard Hughes Corporation® returns as this year’s presenting sponsor, and we are proud to partner with the South Street Seaport Museum.

Three climate artists will present their works at the BlueLine—the future high tide line—to collectively highlight the risk we all face from sea level rise and coastal storms. More than one million people in our region face direct risks from coastal flooding today and our goal is that art can offer a lens into the realities of climate change, coastal resilience, waterfront access, and environmental justice.

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You Are Getting Warmer by Matthew López-Jensen

Matthew López-Jensen’s You Are Getting Warmer utilizes vinyl sandbags, an icon of storm surge and climate change, as a site for artistic intervention and ecological remediation. The wall of sandbags on Pier 17 will initially serve as a venue for an 18-foot panoramic thermal photograph of an estuary in Pelham Bay, Bronx. The vividly colored image is a representation of the heat signature of the landscape; a fragile stretch of New York City coastline threatened by sea level rise. The thermal image forces the viewer to see the impact of heat on the landscape and makes climate change tangible in places where its impact can be overlooked. When the exhibition is over the entire work will be repurposed as a rooftop garden at a high school in the South Bronx. The soil will be used for vegetable beds, the bags will be used to grow plants, and the image will be reinstalled as a banner in the new garden. The climate art installation will be on view from July 16-29 in Seaport Square and Pier 16—as part of City of Water Day 2022.

City of Water Day
City of Water Day

Matthew López-Jensen is a Bronx-based interdisciplinary artist whose rigorous explorations of landscape combine walking, collecting, photography, video, mapping, and extensive research. His projects investigate the relationships between people and local landscapes. For more information, view his full bio on our website or learn more at https://www.jensen-projects.com/.

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River Lab by Mary Mattingly and contributing artists

Shaped like a drop of water, Mary Mattingly’s collaborative initiative River Lab is an interactive and “porous” structure that is in visual dialogue with the East River. When walking through, New York City’s skyline and the East River can be seen through plants whose relatives once may have existed there like a portal into the seaport in deep time. The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City and provides an important natural resource. Contributing artists to River Lab offer tools for multiple ways of accessing the East River, exploring the water through senses: looking at the river on a molecular level through different lenses, drawing workshops, workshops with riparian plant dyes, sound experiences, and seeing foods grown from the cleaned river water. The installation will be activated on the weekends with programming by artists, students, ecologists, and docents. During the weekdays, people can access multigenerational narratives and information about the East River’s indigenous and local lives. The climate art installation will be on view from July 16-31 in Seaport Square and Pier 16—as part of City of Water Day 2022.

The installation will be activated on the weekends with programming by artists, students, ecologists, and docents—see waterfrontalliance.org/artworkshops or click here for the full schedule and more information.

City of Water Day
City of Water Day
City of Water Day
City of Water Day

Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist who co-creates sculptural ecosystems that address forms of public food and commons. River Lab collaborators are artists who were at one point students of a course by the same name. For more information about Mary Mattingly, visit https://www.marymattingly.com/.

Contributing artists include Jessica Blaustein, Blair Butterfield, Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Arnethia Douglass, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Teal Gardner, Aiyesha Ghani, Monica Kapoor, Morgan Kulas, Billie Lee, Aubrey Murdock, Justin N. Moore, Sarah C. Rutherford, Rebecca Schultz, Natalie Stopka, Roberta Trentin, and Rebecca Zablocki.

Structure design/build Julie Chen and Mary Mattingly.

Assembly Julie Chen, Kathryn Cooke, Mary Mattingly, Jacob Nesler, Roberta Trentin.

Docent: Chloe Kellner.

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Tomorrow’s Sea by Edrex Fontanilla and Sarah Nelson Wright

Tomorrow’s Sea is an interactive media sculpture with a virtual reality viewer that uses the metaphor of a telescope to transport viewers to NYC shorelines threatened by climate change and rising sea levels. The wooden viewer, designed to evoke maritime history and wooden boats, rotates 360 degrees to reveal panoramic views and soundscapes created from field recordings by the artists. Taking the perspective of the landscape, the videos immerse the viewer in wild beaches and urban vistas of endangered shorelines in New York City that may be underwater due to sea level rise by 2100. By inviting viewers to observe and appreciate these places, the artists hope to inspire a meditation on the city and the water, the resilience of nature, and the urgent need for action on climate change. The climate art installation will be on view from July 16-29 in Seaport Square and Pier 16—as part of City of Water Day 2022.

Activation times:

Saturday July 16, 12 – 2pm & 3 – 6pm

Sunday July 17, 3 – 6pm

Thursday July 21, 3 – 6pm

Saturday July 23, 3 – 6pm

Sunday July 24, 3 – 6pm

City of Water Day
City of Water Day
City of Water Day
City of Water Day

Edrex Fontanilla and Sarah Nelson Wright are new media artists who have collaborated for the past seven years. They are committed to creating impactful experiential works that illuminate climate issues by awakening the senses and inspiring deep connection to environmental justice. To learn more about Edrex Fontanilla’s work, visit https://edrex.com/. For more information about Sarah Nelson Wright, view her website https://www.sarahnelsonwright.com/.

City of Water Day