Water Offering
2021-2026
Granite
Sculpture 1, 17’ 3” x 5’ 8” Ft x 3’ Sculpture 2 8’10”x 9’6’ x33’
Public Art Installation commissioned for the Queens Botanical Garden by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
Water Offering is a performative sculpture project inspired by Egyptian offering tables and Japanese Megaliths. As cultural artifacts, I am drawn to these sculptures as performative objects, as they were activated by the pouring water through the carved channels in the stone. In a similar way, I have designed Water offering so that viewers can directly engage with the art work, pouring water into carved basins and watching it move through channels eventually running over an unfinished rock surface, revealing its mountainous topography.
Made of quarried granite and glacial erratic boulders, these pieces reference both the massive infrastructure built to support the inhabitants of New York City, and the largely invisible system of aquifers and groundwater reservoirs, both of which are used to irrigate the plants in this garden. This two part sculpture continues the diagonal axis of the education building, connecting the building site back to the garden. As performative works, these pieces can be activated by individuals on their own or by the institution as part of its mission to educate visitors. The effort required by visitors and staff to activate these works is an important part of its meaning. As participatory works rather than constantly running fountains, we are immediately aware of the materiality and scarcity of water. I hope that through this work, we can become re-enchanted with the elemental properties of water and give greater consideration to our relationship with it.