Bay Ridge and Beyond

Well....since we last checked in we have moved to our new home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (it's far from Manhattan but close to the ocean and nice and quaint). I have also finally started my internship at Franklin Furnace. I'm assisting with their Sequential Art for Kids program, helping one of the teaching artists teach grade four and five classes photography.

I've also been working with a couple of Canadian artists on a collaborative art project called The Encampment. I found out about it before I left Halifax and started going to the meetings soon after arriving. The installation was on Roosevelt Island which is a small island in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. The island has a long history which includes its use as a home to some of New York's most notorious institutions including a Small Pox Hospital and a Prison. The idea of the project was for Collaborators to create installations in each tent that reflect, or are based on, a personal story from the island that was found through research.

I originally was working on an installation that was based around one of the urban planners who planned the current state of the island, as a planned community that was supposed to act as a town within the city. I eventually abandoned this idea and instead went with an idea I had had early on. I made the tent into an interactive installation where people were encouraged to write letters, with paper and pencil provided, on a story of loss from within their lives.

Here are some pictures I took over the weekend...


The Encampment was also part of Open House New York. Over the weekend there was lots of interesting stuff to go see, but we only made it to one.

On Saturday we went to see the "Science Barge". It's a barge floating in the Hudson river that is a fully self-sustained greenhouse farm. It was really interesting to hear about their ideas and farming methods. The whole thing is to show how rooftops in the city can be used for agriculture.

Here are some pics...