Location Research: East River State Park
East river state park is located in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The park stretches along the East River near North 7th, 8th, and 9th Streets, and offers unobstructed views of the Williamsburg Bridge and Midtown Manhattan.
When walking along the beach, seeing sea gulls fly above the sky, you will feel really relax. For people who are interested in recreation, east river park is also a great spot since there’re a soccer field and a wide road for jogging. Around the park, pop shops like Artists & Fleas and vintage stores are attracting a lots of tourists.
Reason Why
Living in a large city like NYC, people’s eyes are inundated with skyscrapers, cars and flashy stores. For people in Manhattan, central park will be a good spot to breath fresh airs. However, for people who lives in other neighborhoods like Brooklyn, there are only a few places like east river state park, which can be viewed as a place to take a walk after a busy day. The east river state park has a great potential to be a destination like central park since it offers visitors a stunning view of the Manhattan skyline, a delightful play area and the green space that provides many opportunities for recreation and relaxation. But it is rarely known and the poor management of the park makes it less attractive. Creative changes need to be made in order to benefit local community.
Concept
The idea of the project is to create an art installation that reflect the features of the east river state park and people’s view of the city while it helps local people to improve their life quality through making the east river state park become a great place to relax and entertain . At the same time, it contributes to local economic development by encouraging tourists.
Idea
The installation including two wave-like architectures with two different murals, which are on the opposite site of each other. The murals will be created by Julie Mehretu. The inspiration of the murals will come from the landscape of east river park, maps of the neighborhood, street plans nearby and the skyline of manhattan. The two murals represent people’s view of the city when they’re in the park. They’re in the city and watching the city’s landscape. There is a “city” in their mind while they can see the other city in front of them. Also, the inner space of the architecture can be used for holding exhibitions, flea markets or rent out to coffeeshop and other local shops.
Artists: Julie Mehretu
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Julie Mehretu was born in 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a contemporary Ethiopian-born American artist known for her large scale abstract paintings. Blending elements of Abstract Expressionism with Pop Art, her work bears the influence of important 20th-century painters, including Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian.
She is famous for large scale painting with multiple materials. When she is doing landscape paintings, she will blur the image first and then print it on a large canvas. The she will use projector to project other images on the canvas and continue to creating the art piece based on it. Also, materials such as masking tapes will also be incorporated into the painting.
Initial 3D Sketches
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- top view
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- side view
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- bird view
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- front view
Initially, I just made two murals. But when I thinking about it as a public installation, I feel there should be more interactive part for people to engage in.
Thus, in the final prototype, the installation has an inner space for holding exhibitions and having local shops. Meanwhile, the celling is made out of glass so it will has a reflection of the blue sky, which looks like a flowing river.
Drawing Process
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- Inspiration street plan 1
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- Inspiration photograph 1
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- Inspiration street plan 2
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- Inspiration photograph 2
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- Step1
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- Step2
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- Final drawing 1
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- Final drawing 2
Prototype
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- Final Prototype 1
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- Final Prototype 2
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- Corridor 1
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- Side View
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- Corridor 2
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- inside view 1
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- The glass top
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- Top view
Benefit
The art installation will endow the park with its own features and cultural content. It will give a chance for people who are in the neighborhood to know about the park and having a better experience of relaxing themselves. Meanwhile, the installation will encourages more tourists to Williamsburg and contributes to the local economy. Using the economic benefit, the government are able to update the existing infrastructure and enables a higher life quality for people the neighborhood.
Promise
• Relaxing
• Entertaining
•Cultural center
•Best local park for outdoor recreation•Landmark of Brooklyn
Reflection
From this project, I’ve learned how to research specific location from its history, its target population and its culture content (such as musical, political events). By combining all the element above with my own experience and observation, I’m able to create a destination that demonstrates the features of the place and make it more attractive, more meaningful.
At the same time, I learned a lot from the artist I chose. Her approaches of recreating images and combine different materials is amazing and subversive. She can use pictorial elements and geometric shapes to create a sense of space. It is true that using her style to do paintings is challenge. However, I think this is an effective way to learn artistic skills from her.
In this project, I added my own concept which is also a biology of seeing things. Our eye is projecting the real scene into our cerebral cortex so we can “see” things. It means that when you are looking at the city, there’s another city in your brain. Putting the concept into the installation, since the mural is created based on the manhattan view from east river state park, there’re part of the city inside the mural, which is another city inside the city. At this time, the mural and the people are the carrier for the city. What makes the city is not the buildings and infrastructures, it’s citizens themselves.
I can see that I’m more good at digitals process instead of making things. Even though I’m trying a lot of things at the same time, I’m still pretty sure about my major. And I found developing the concept of an art piece is more interesting than I thought. In the future, I may want to minor in art and design history.
