The Metropolis of Alexandria has unveiled its latest general public artwork set up, Groundswell, in Alexandria’s Waterfront Park (1 Prince St.). This new temporary installation by artist Mark Reigelman is the 3rd in the Internet site See: New Sights in Previous Town once-a-year public art sequence, and will be on screen via November.
Commissioned to generate an authentic set up for Waterfront Park, Reigelman centered on Alexandria’s functioning waterfront as the shoreline crept further into the Potomac River. In his investigation, he realized that drastic steps manipulated the city’s shoreline. Starting in the 18th century, thousands of wooden pilings have been pushed further and deeper into the Potomac River in excess of time, thus shifting the city’s waterfront over many years. This permitted Alexandria to produce and mature its sprawling dock into a key commercial port.
Groundswell pays homage to this at any time-evolving history and brings an aspect of participate in to the shoreline’s content topography. The installation options a ground mural depicting the floor of the Potomac River and more than 100 wood pilings all through the internet site. They will array in heights from 12 to 42 inches, in accordance with the river flooring topography or bathymetry. Every single 14-inch-diameter piling is topped with a cobalt blue mirrored area etched with expansion rings that suggest the passing of time. They glisten in the light-weight like the nearby drinking water, reflecting the sky, as very well as the faces of passersby. Reigelman hopes readers will be immersed in this shimmering landscape as they navigate as a result of the pilings, looking at their position in the city’s historical past.
The Internet site See non permanent public artwork sequence highlights Waterfront Park as a civic room and is knowledgeable by the historic waterfront and neighboring neighborhood. Waterfront Park is a important locale for unique commissioned artwork in Alexandria. It follows Olalekan Jeyifous’s 2020 installation Wrought, Knit, Labors, Legacies and SOFTlab’s 2019 Mirror Mirror set up. Reigelman was chosen to produce this web site-particular artwork by a community undertaking pressure with the Alexandria Commission for the Arts’ acceptance. The Metropolis of Alexandria will also fee regional artists to build web page-unique performances or activations in reaction to Groundswell later on this 12 months.
People can see Groundswell at Waterfront Park from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. day-to-day. Visit alexandriava.gov/PublicArt for extra details about Groundswell and the Internet site See public artwork sequence.
Reigelman has also exhibited his function at other public web-sites, galleries and museums across the place. His works, Manifest Destiny! (San Francisco), White Cloud (Cleveland), Wood-Pile (Cleveland), Upriver-Downriver (Louisville, Ky.) and The Conference House (Boston) have been identified by the Individuals for the Arts as remaining amid the 50 most powerful public will work across the nation. His most recent award-profitable website-unique installations include Formation at the San Diego Global Airport and Sweetwater at the former Domino Sugar Manufacturing unit web-site in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Reigelman studied Sculpture and Industrial Layout at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio and product or service layout at Central Saint Martins University of the Arts in London. The artist life and works in Brooklyn, New York.
The following is a statement from the artist about his get the job done on Groundswell:
“Children’s toys, fossilized biscuits, stamped stoneware, hundreds of footwear. These are a couple of illustrations of the goods unearthed in excavations along the Alexandria waterfront more than the a long time, demonstrating its function as an ongoing hub of activity and commerce. As these, drastic measures had been taken to manipulate Alexandria’s connection to the drinking water. In the late 18th century, for case in point, wooden ships were being deliberately sunk in an effort to increase the city’s shoreline.
From a city standing upon lofty banking institutions to a person that bled deeper into the river each and every decade, these pilings made a fluctuating new boundary in the conversation between river and shore.
Groundswell seeks to recontextualize these quintessential maritime objects, fork out homage to the space’s abundant heritage, and carry an ingredient of enjoy to the shoreline’s content topography.
From ‘Pondering Shorelines,’ a paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Convention, January 2020 by B. Skolnik:
For terrestrial archaeologists doing the job in urban and waterfront options like Alexandria, the water’s edge routinely signifies a boundary that is seemingly fastened, past which is figuratively (and at times actually) outside the house of their jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the drinking water is the connective tissue that linked these port towns in the earlier and produced them feasible financial centers. Furthermore, the boundary involving land and drinking water are not able to be believed of as a static line like it is regularly shown on historic maps. Just as there is topography on the land that shapes human action, there is topography (or bathymetry) beneath the drinking water that styles human exercise.
Groundswell consists of 102 14” raw wood pilings ranging in height from 12-42”, each topped with a cobalt-blue, reflective floor. The pilings’ undulating profile is established by the topographical map illustrated in the floor mural, which is derived from the contours of the adjacent Potomac River. The tops on Groundswell’s pilings shimmer in the light like h2o, mimicking the unfixed shoreline and reflecting unique angles of the sky and faces of passersby.
Etched into the surface of the shimmering blue acrylic are growth rings, which place to the passing of time and the ever-shifting waterfront boundary. Groundswell’s immersive orientation encourages guests to navigate by way of the pilings’ grid-like ecosystem, taking into consideration their area in the city’s heritage at this minute in time.”