Harvest Dome, Public Art Open House

 

Date: October 23, 2011

Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi gathered discarded storm-snapped umbrellas, littered seasonally throughout Manhattan for the Harvest Dome. They assembled them into a giant twenty-four foot diameter, light-gauge spherical dome, which will float on the waters of the Inwood Hill Park inlet as a physical revelation of the city’s accumulated waterborne debris. The inlet, a remnant of Spuyten Duyvil Creek’s marshland, was reconfigured and dredged in 1895 to create the Harlem River Ship Canal. It holds brackish water and is home to saltwater cord grass, a species particularly adept at trapping flotsam and converting it into the nutrient-rich mud called detritus that supports abundant life on the marsh.

Harvest Dome reveals and transfigures the workings of this ecosystem at Manhattan’s northern tip, which was once prevalent on the island. It calls attention to the particularities of its tides—which reveal the mud flats twice daily—through hands-on engagement with the water and the real-time harvesting of the city’s manufactured debris into a large-scale curiosity of urban nature. Harvest Dome is being constructed in collaboration with youth from Inwood Community Services.

Start time: 3:00 pm

End time: 5:00 pm

Contact phone: (212) 360-8163

Location: Inwood Hill Nature Center (in Inwood Hill Park)

Harvest Dome, Public Art Open House
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 04:00:07 GMT