Art in the Parks

River Whittle renders the cityscape of what we now call Manhattan in deep blue and the stippled effect of half-tone newsprint. In bright red gothic-style script, the word “Lenapehoking,” the true name for the homeland of the Lenape People, is cut out of the city. The Lenape, the original inhabitants of this land, are also known as the Delaware, a name brought by European settler colonists, and who lived in the area surrounding the Delaware River and Hudson Valley River Sheds, including parts of present-day Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The second part of the title references the campaign to return governing power, as well as physical land, back to Indigenous people in their ancestral territories, which globally have been misappropriated and degraded by white colonizers.

The image’s starkness, the outmoded printing technique, and Gothic script evince the traumatic past of the Lenape diaspora—systematic genocide, forced relocation, and centuries of oppression. The landmass spotted by Europeans upon arrival, now tower-filled Lower Manhattan, is hazy and suggests the difficulty of seeing the past horrors revealed in the present. The amalgamation of time and land markers with the demand for “land back” highlights the artist’s insistence that collective healing, land reparations, and historical reckoning are all deeply imbricated. 

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Soft Spots, is a mindfulness path that takes inspiration from the playful style of self-help and mutual aid graphics that gained popularity on social media during the pandemic. Subverting the language of "social distance" signage, Soft Spots, is designed for taking a moment to contemplate seeking support when you feel unsafe.

This exhibition is presented by ArtBridge, and Facebook Open Arts.

Art is Healing celebrates the staff at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, who continue to fight COVID-19, and the community of artists who came together to support the hospital at the height of the pandemic. Pictures For Elmhurst collaborated with the photographer Camila Falquez to create 31 original portraits to share the faces of those behind the hospital’s immeasurable dedication to its community through these challenging times. Falquez’s new portraits sit alongside 33 photographs from the original April 2020 Pictures For Elmhurst fundraiser to illustrate how intimately art and health are intertwined – how art can be healing. 

This project is presented by Pictures for Elmhurst.

This work pays homage to the incredible universe of possibilities present at every moment. The reality we find ourselves in is just a glimpse or sliver of an epic landscape of decisions that constantly eludes us. This work illustrates a bit of this conundrum by constructing a living model from a computer simulation in which multiple dimensions of decisions have been overlaid. It is dedicated to the infinite histories taken and untaken that have led everywhere and nowhere. The embedded hand-laid mosaic refers directly to the location of the sculpture in Corona, Queens and illustrates a hand placing a cube and “sprinkling some sauce all over,” as a local resident described.

This exhibition is made possible by the Art in the Parks: Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park Grant, which supports the creation of site-specific public artworks by Queens-based artists for two sites within Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

The artist is best known for her dynamic, category-defying, larger-than-life drawings. Her work explores identity as a critical pathway to self-expression and often asks, who are you? Martin uses her signature lines, iconic shapes, and primarily monochromatic black and white imagery to reflect the vibrancy of Rockaway’s community and urban beach landscape. The transformed 16,000 square foot outdoor recreational space is now a 360-degree activation where text and images appear out of her fluid and interconnected lines.

This project was made possible by Friends of Seaside Playground (FOSP), in collaboration with 7G Group, and The Rockway Hotel.

The work is one of Lachaise’s best-known, monumental works dating from the late twenties. The buoyant, expansive figure represents a timeless earth goddess, one Lachaise knew and sought to capture throughout his career. This vision was inspired by his wife, who was his muse and model, Isabel, that “majestic woman” who walked by him once by the Bank of the Seine. This work is a tribute to the power of all women, to ‘Woman,’ as the artist referred to his wife, with a capital W.

Gaston Lachaise devoted himself to the human form, producing a succession of powerfully conceived nude figures in stone and bronze that reinvigorated the sculptural traditions of Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.

This exhibition is presented by Hunters Point Parks Conservancy and the Lachaise Foundation.

‘Planeta Abuelx’ is a solo exhibition of new work by artist Guadalupe Maravilla drawing on ancestral, Indigenous, and ritual practices of healing. Maravilla’s sculptures are an accumulation of totemic forms, recycled and found materials, botanicals, Mesoamerican symbolism, and functional sound components.

The title, expanding the idea of “Mother Earth” into the intergenerational, gender neutral, and open-ended “Grandparent Planet,” points to Maravilla’s framing of intimate familial relationships and passage of time as crucial to the restorative process. The installation of works serves as an homage to our elders, not only as a vulnerable group disproportionally lost to illness including Covid-19, but also as keepers of curative ancestral knowledge passed down through generations.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

As neighborhood-wide development plans and economic initiatives sweep through Jamaica, Queens, the People’s Communication Commission wants to challenge the power relationship that advertising has in public space. With the understanding that Downtown Jamaica is a growing transportation hub, business center, and an ecosystem of art and culture, this exhibition asks the question: Where is the voice of the people? 

This project is part of Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2021 organized by the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning.