The People's Money (2022-2023)
Your Money, Your Community, Your Voice.
What problem would you like to solve?
Addressing the Climate Crisis: Connect and educate people through the arts to understand and care for the environmental resources in their community.
This project will educate the community about the ecology that surrounds them, bring people together in a common cause, raise consciousness and foster stewardship.
Our climate crisis affects us all and more and more we will be dealing with the movement of people who are escaping the adverse effects of a changing climate. We need safe spaces and we need collaboration to move us towards equity and sustainability for everyone. This project is meant to make people aware of what is important to all of us and what resonates through different cultures. When we see ourselves as people with similar hopes, dreams and needs, we find understanding. When we understand each other, it is easier to work together
Why is it important to solve? Why is it relevant for the community?
In a time of extreme environmental dangers and social upheavals it is important to value the resources we have and to cooperate as stewards towards a better future, where we work together towards new ideas to help us mitigate the damage the climate crisis is inflicting on our world. This exhibition will be an opportunity to instill a deeper respect for nature and connect our community to each other through art. Some of the issues that artists will be exploring are preparedness and sustainability and equitable access to nature as a way to improve health, water quality, and land use, all with a lens on the Bay Ridge and the South Brooklyn community.
Climate justice is a civil rights issue and Bay Ridge has an economically diverse population. The park spaces are used by all community members, but they are invaluable to residents who live in shared spaces and should be a place where everyone is welcome. Bringing the arts into the public spaces of this community allows residents to experience fine art in their own backyard. This project will educate the community about the ecology that surrounds them, bring people together in a common cause, raise consciousness and foster stewardship.
What idea do you have to address the problem?
In April/ May/ June of 2023 Stand4 Gallery will host the multi-faceted project, Bay Ridge Through an Ecological Lens, curated by Jennifer McGregor and presented in conjunction with ecoartspace. This free, interactive, public, community arts exhibition will feature artists from the New York area and consist of nature walks and community interventions in the gallery and in various locations throughout the neighborhood.
Artists have been selected to design projects that highlight environmental issues that are relevant to Bay Ridge for this community intervention. They will be working on the Narrows waterfront, the public park spaces, public library and other public spaces throughout the community.
Below are the artists and preliminary examples of work proposed by the artists: (note: the artists are in the planning stages and will send final proposals in December)
1) Kate Dodd- will present (Climate Library Experience and Receptacle) that is intended to increase awareness of the impact climate change has on neighborhood streetscapes, and therefore on community residents and their health, through participation in a site-specific installation at the Bay Ridge Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The library will be an incubator, workshop, or treasure hunt. There will be an exchange with the community that includes opportunities to collaborate on artworks. Kate was awarded a $1000 grant from Design Trust for Public Space for this specific project.
2) Aaron Asis- will interpret and pull out the history of underappreciated spaces within the community to highlight its lost history. These images will be brought into the public space to be used for education and discussion.
3) Chris Costan- will create paintings with text to inform the public about environmental issues. These works will be placed in storefronts throughout the community for people to discover.
4) E.J. McAdams- in collaboration with Jimbo Blachly will lead a haiku hike, and/or birding without binoculars discovery walk, to include plein art drawing and poetry events through Owls’ Head Park. E.J. wrote the historical sign for Owl’s Head park in Bay Ridge when he was a park ranger 20 years ago. We would like to include the organization Tea Arts Culture in his poetry walks to host a tea ceremony before or after the walk.
5) Duy Hoàng- is currently capturing water vapor from the respiration of plants and using that water to do a painting of the plant with watercolors. He will bring his practice into the park spaces of Bay Ridge.
6) Sergey Jiveten- will present a version of Furrow for Bay Ridge by conducting workshops asking people to bring him a seed along with the story of their connection to the seed. He will etch their portrait into the seed during the conversation to give the participant a voice and to make a connection with his collaborators. Intended site for event is Narrows Botanical Gardens. A "Seed Call" has already been shared with community members. Sergey is asking people to collect seeds during the fall season to be used in the project.
7) Nikki Lindt- will capture the sound of the undergrounds and continue the work that she has developed for Prospect Park. Nikki recently interviewed with CBS This Morning and NPR to describe her practice. She will be recording the sounds of the shoreline and the park.
8) Rita Leduc- will create an interdisciplinary project about communication through ecology. Her site-specific interventions will extend an earlier project that focused on Sunset Park, the neighborhood connected to Bay Ridge on its northern waterfront.
9) Nancy Nowacek- will present a musical performance with a flotilla of boats off the Bay Ridge shoreline that have an environmental message or offering a “Key to the City” to an unsung Bay Ridge environmental steward.
10) Peter Edlund- is researching the invasive Japanese Knotwood tree that is pushing into the park spaces in Bay Ridge and Stand4’s backyard. He will create a work that looks at invasive species in the neighborhood.
11) Rebecca Alan- is a painter who is engaged with the environment. She will create new work based on locations in Bay Ridge, possibly Narrows Botanical Garden, that juxtaposes nature and human-made structures.
12) Benjamin Swett- has photographed New York City trees throughout the five boroughs for many years. His photographs of trees in Bay Ridge such American Elm on Ridge Boulevard at 72nd Street, 2010, will be included in the exhibition.
13) Christopher Lin- focuses on systems and is interested in researching the local waterways of Bay Ridge. He is considering working with oysters and other filter feeders that are native to the waters. His current work is soil-based and highlights decomposers as vital to the life cycle. Lin wants to show the importance of circular systems as a way to counter the consumptive capitalist system we live under that is so destructive to the environment.
Stand4 Gallery will be the hub and exhibition center and the art interventions will take place in the public realm of Bay Ridge. This consists of the public library, the public parks, the business districts and the streets of the community.
SHORT-TERM OUTCOME: Stage a two-month public exhibition designed to bring the arts into the heart of the community, make it accessible and connect people to each other and the natural world that surrounds them through art.
Stand4 would also like to create a beautiful post-production catalogue, digital and print version, that would archive the exhibition and put print versions into select spaces with public access in the community, maybe even travel through community spaces. A hard cover copy will be made as a donation to the library and the digital version will be free and accessible to everyone.
LONG-TERM OUTCOME: to make people aware of the natural resources they live with and foster stewardship. This will be the beginning of a longer commitment to connecting the community to each other and to use art to preserve, regenerate, protect, and strengthen the Bay Ride community and its natural resources. It will also be a commitment to focus on more community collaboration that will lead to solutions to the environmental issues that affect the people of NYC.
Stand4 would like to organize a yearly or bi-annual exhibition that builds on this inaugural exhibition and continues to focus on the ecology of the community. This would center on an exhibition, its performances and interventions, with continued connections to the community, other artists and curators and additional archives. Another long-term goal would be to engage the community in political actions that address our climate crisis and empower the community to collaborate on solutions.
This project is designed to reach the entire community. We have been reaching out to organizations and businesses and will also be hiring docents to guide community members through the events and to aid the artists. These docents will be community members and we will reach out to the local high school and other organizations to find people who would be interested in learning about the project and reaching out to inform and teach others in their community. Members of the community will be a part of the process throughout.
Who would that help?
Target audience; The ENTIRE community of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
The people who are invested in Stand4 Gallery are all community members and they are currently reaching out to local merchants and community organizations to include them in the project. There will also be a grass roots effort to tell people about the project. We began outreach in June of 2022 and will continue moving through the community inform the public, collaborate with other organizations and connect artists to the community.
The project is designed to engage a broad spectrum of the community by meeting people where they live, play and work.
-We will be sharing the project with, local schools (curriculum ideas will be shared), senior centers, youth centers, community centers, businesses... The artists are interdisciplinary and will offer artist talks and an opportunity to share their process with community members at the library and the public park spaces. Some of the artists will collaborate with community members to make work and others will offer a way for people to discover art work and learn about the natural environment that surrounds them. All activities and events will be free.
What neighborhood would benefit from your idea?
South Brooklyn- Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
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