WATER
June 23rd – July 23rd 2010

As oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of up to 100,000 barrels a day, Atlantic Gallery announces it’s summer group show WATER, an exhibition of artwork —by 75 artists —inspired by the elemental and timely topic of water. The gallery’s call for submissions for its seventh themed show predated the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Water seemed a suitable subject-and one of growing urgency as the world’s water was already in peril. The resulting deluge of water works in many media: painting, photography, sculpture, monotypes, etchings, glass art, fiber art, assemblage, video and installation pieces will be on view from Wednesday June 23rd through Friday, July 23rd.

Water is a subject of immense depth and magnitude. The gallery runneth over, reflecting many aspects of water through the artists’ responses with works small and large, abstract and representational. Images of dam infrastructure, storm clouds, beachfronts, toxic waterways, and plastic bottles share space with swimmers, tankers and creatures of the sea. Water wild and domesticated will be on view —from crashing waves to the verdant subdivision made green by water pumped from sources faraway.

Water is a sacred purifier to most religions, so it’s surprising, if not stupefying, that we don’t treat it with more respect. We offer it toxins, plunder its depths, and run the tap without a second thought. Today a combination of climate change and our aging infrastructure shows that the surf is definitely UP. Architects and city planners design with rising tides in mind. California must now address the deteriorating Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta which, last winter some say could be ‘Katrina all over again,’ only worse. Who could have anticipated how much worse it could get? More people than we presently know, it turns out.

Opening Reception for WATER Wednesday June 23rd , 6-8pm

Save the date for a deeper discussion on Water during our panel event:
ON THE WATER FRONT panel discussion Tuesday July 13th, 6-8pm

Atlantic Gallery
135 West 29th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues
Suite 601 New York, NY 10001-5104
(212) 219-3183 http://www.atlanticgallery.org
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12noon-6pm

When: opens Friday May 7th at 7:00 p.m
Where: Devotion Gallery (54 Maujer Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206)
Admission: used water bottle for reuse, and is open to the public
Performances: Bora Yoon, Ranjit Bhatnagar and the Glass Bees, and Tom Vanderwall

Bottled V.2.5 will be part of the ScrapCycle Show. See sneak peek at the installation here. It is a departure from the previous BottledProjects. See the details on AnalogousProjects and all the events happening around the show below.

Analogous Projects is pleased to present ScrapCycle(reUSE/reCOMBINE), a group show opening at 7:00 p.m. on May 7th at Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg, with works by Aricoco (Ari Tabei), Katherine Liberovskaya + o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi), LoVid (Kyle Lapidus + Tali Hinkis), Philip Galanter, Phillip Stearns, Pollie Barden, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Torino:Margolis (Jenny Torino + Ben Margolis).

ScrapCycle is an ongoing project devoted to the creative reuse of refuse, and charges a piece of refuse for reuse as the price of admission.  This annual one-night event has historically presented installations and performances comprised of upcycled and repurposed materials.  This year, ScrapCycle has been reinterpreted as a group exhibition, ScrapCycle(reUSE/reCOMBINE), which references complexity science in order to liken the small pervasive effects of social sculpture, environmental activism, and economic perspective to a fine-tuning of interdependent parameters with global results.

The exhibition opens Friday May 7th at 7:00 p.m., with performances by Bora Yoon, Ranjit Bhatnagar and the Glass Bees, and Tom Vanderwall:  Exhibiting artist Ranjit Bhatnagar, as part of his Instrument-a-Day installation, has used scrap wood and found parts in order to convert the gallery wall into a cello for his performance with the Glass Bees.

All events require a piece of refuse for reuse as the price of admission.  Materials are used for on-site installations, directed toward local upcycling artists, or repurposed as holiday gift wrap.  These action-based economic and environmental aspects of ScrapCycle refer to the act of reuse as requiring us to approach everyday decisions from a use-value perspective, which is in opposition to our collective exchange-value upbringing.  ScrapCycle places an exchange-value on upcycled and reused materials, in order to probe the environmental effects of economic perspective.  And, in addition to featuring upcycled artworks and performances, workshops will take place throughout the month in order to underscore the participatory nature of the ScrapCycle series.

ScrapCycle(reUSE/reCOMBINE) opens at 7:00 p.m. on May 7th at Devotion Gallery (54 Maujer Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206) with performances by Bora Yoon, Ranjit Bhatnagar and the Glass Bees, and Tom Vanderwall.  Admission is a used water bottle for reuse, and is open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.

On Saturday, April 24th, the redesign of the Bottled Project by the Green Group, an after school program at the Learning Community Charter School, was created in the Jersey City Sculpture Satellite Space.

The inspiration was the Empire State Building across the Hudson River. This lead to creating a city scape of the building of the financial district in downtown Jersey City. Creating a reflection of the surrounding area.

There were five production artists who constructed to city scape on April 24th:

• Three students from the Green Group: Noah Dunton, William Garner and
  Abby Loughlin.
• Two interns from the Jersey City Museum: Emily Solorzano, Ana Abaraca Lyman

The buildings were constructed by stacking the bottles with sheets of cardboard in between each layer. For this type of construction, the artist learned the importance of details. Details such as the height of a bottle’s neck need to be inspected to be sure that each layer is level. Each level has one row less than the one before it to assist in the stability of the structure.

After the building scape was constructed, bottles were arranged in the windows to reference the buildings across the Hudson River. A river of bottles are arranged between the building scape and the windows to complete the piece.

See the full Flickr set.

The Green Group is redesign the Bottled V.2 sculpture for Earth Day. We had worked a few weeks back at the school to introduce the students to building bottles and coming up with ideas.

Today the group met at the Jersey City Museum Satellite Sculpture Space at the Mack-Cali building. The students were introduced into the existing the design. We revisited their ideas from our previous session. They quickly gravitated to the idea of tree, city scape or Empire State Building. The decision was made to go with the Empire State Building. The speed at this decision was driven by their desire to dive (literally) into the bottles.

The space is smaller so after everyone got to initially get in the space, I divided them up into two teams: Design Team and bottled bagging. The members of each team rotated to be sure that everyone who wanted too got to play in the bottles.

Steve Krinksy, their mentor, worked with the design team and they decided to create square rows of 10 x 10 bottles. Each layer to be topped with cardboard to enable to build up the column for the building shape.

They drew out some designs and they using bottles and on-site cardboard began building prototypes. Fortunately, there is empty parking space behind the sculpture space that provided the space for the teams to prototype. The prototyping team divided into three different teams to try out different theories on stacking, to string or not to string, layering.

At the end they all came together and combined the best of their experiments.

Steve took charge of the bottled collection and got all the existing bottled cleared out of the space and ready for new design.

On Saturday, April 24th, the students that are available will be returning to build the city scape design for Earth Day.

Photos from on-site visit: Full Flickr Set

Today I went to the Learning Community Charter School. I met with the Green Group. This is an after school program where the students learn about sustainable issues regarding our environment.

Their mentor is Steve Krinsky. He relates global environmental issues to the local issues in Jersey City. We began by talking about the inspiration for the bottledproject series and discussing their thoughts. Next we brainstormed ideas they wanted to convey in the new design of the sculpture. Some of the ideas that stuck were:

• creating the city scape/skyline across the Hudson River
• creating a representation of the topography of the river

At this point it was time for them to get their hands on the bottles and prototype. The green group had continued to collect water bottles, which provided remade material to work with. The students build several structures: triangles, pyramid, and columns.

The constraints for redesign are:

• bottles must remain recyclable so adhesive is limited
• no budget for extra supplies: additional items will need to be donated
• students must commit to time to work on completing the redesign

Photos from the Green Group Prototyping Session: see full Flickr Set

We were fortunate to have WNBC come and do some filming for a segment on the news in a couple of days. Myself and students were interviewed.

t was my first time being able to meet with some of the students.The students had many questions. They were amazed by the amount of bottles their collective collecting had produced. I Many of the younger students were mainly interested in how one got into the window space.

The next steps will be to work with the various student groups to have them redesign the sculpture. The installation will be up until August 2010. We hope to redesign it a couple of times during that time.

See students group photos below:

Flickr Set: Opening Ceremony Photos

Students from the The Ethical Community Charter School

Students from Frank Conwell Middle School 4

Students from Charles E. Trefurt School #8

PS #23 Grade 4 students

Opening Reception: Bottled V.2
February 17, 2010 @ 10am

JCM @ the Columbus Windows: Sculpture Satellite
The Mack-Cali building windows located at
Christopher Columbus Drive between Washington and Greene Streets
Jersey City, NJ 07302

You are invited to the unveiling of Bottled V.2.! Jersey City Museum, Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs/Tourism Development, Liberty State Park’s Interpretive Center, and the school children and residents of Jersey City have helped create this installation transforming the Columbus Windows the Mack-Cali building.

Conceived by artist Pollie Barden, Bottled V.2. is made up of more than 2,000 discarded water bottles collected from school waste receptacles, the beachfront along the Hackensack and Hudson Rivers, city streets and neighborhood parks. Barden and Jersey City Museum have collaborated with more than 1,000 students from the Learning Community Charter School, M.S. Number 4, P.S. Number 8, P.S. Number 23, and the Ethical Community Charter School to collect these bottles.

Follow it all on twitter @bottledproject

WWIII
March 14 – April 12 2008
Artist Talk and Closing– April 12th 4-9pm
Opening Reception– March 14th 6-9 pm [flickr pix]

Mana Fine Arts Exhibition Space
Gallery Hours M-F 10-6 pm or by appointment
227 Coles Street, Jersey City, NJ 07310
(800) 330-9659

Directions:

• From Newport Path Station
• From Grove Street Path Station
• From Lincoln Tunnel
• From Holland Tunnel

Bottled v1 developed in the Wonder Woman Residency. The installation is design with 1095 recycled water bottles.

In 1995, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin said, “the wars of the next century will be fought over water”

Why do I buy a bottle of water at 10000x the price of the water that runs freely from my tap?

I am interested in small actions that create bigger impacts. I am one of sheep who is choosing to make water a commodity by buying it a pretty package. The water bottled symbolizes the absurd pursue to achieve nature’s “purity” through technology.

Only 2 out of every 10 water bottles are recycled. Americans drink approximately 26 billion liters a year.

The sculpture is a low-resolution landscape motif created out of 1095 recycled water bottles. The highlight section approximates the amount of bottles that would be recycled. The rest of the bottles each represent 3x as much water trapped in packaging then the liquid it held.

“What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.”
- Margaret Mead