Eco-Artists To Start Yearlong Environmental Project At Ft. Totten

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- Two renowned artists are taking their talents to Bayside's Fort Totten, where they'll spend the next year dreaming up New York City's ideal nature scene and showcasing the wild wonders already found in its five boroughs.

Dylan Gauthier and Julia Oldham were chosen earlier this month to participate in the third annual Arts and Humanities Residency Program, where they'll collaborate with researchers at Fort Totten Park's Urban Field Station on urban conservation art projects that will eventually be displayed at Central Park's Arsenal Gallery.

The Urban Field Station is a collaboration between the New York City Parks Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Services designed to give city and federal scientists a space to collaborate on long-term urban conservation projects. The residency program launched from the UFS Fort Totten in June 2016 and has since brought two artists in each year to work on projects to engage the public in their research.

Staff from NYC Parks and USDA Forest Services worked with former artists-in-residence and a Queens Museum representative to choose this year's residents, said NYC Parks spokeswoman Meghan Lalor.

"We sent out a call for applications to a list of ecological artists," Lalor told Patch. "Applicants were assessed on artistic impact, fit with Urban Field Station, and proposal creativity."

This year, the center was looking for artists whose work focused on environmental stewardship, or more specifically, the different ways people protect their natural environment and strengthening the local grassroots organization that work toward those goals, according to the USDA Forest Services website.

Dylan Gauthier, a Brooklyn-based artist, plans to spend his residency creating a multimedia publication posed a multimedia publication series exploring NYC Parks' "51 Forever Wild Sites," which includes more than 8,700 acres of the most ecologically valuable land - think towering forests, vibrant wetlands and sprawling meadows - in the city's five boroughs.

Over the course of his residency, Gauthier plans to create a series of field guides with sounds from each of those "Wild Sites" along with printed handbooks, 360-degree videos, interactive maps and other hands-on events, according to his project proposal.

Gauthier is a founder of the boat-building and publishing collective, Mare Liberium, and the Sunview Luncheonette, a Greenpoint-based co-op for art, politics and communalism. He is also the co-organizer of another artist-research residency atop New York City's largest former landfill, and his work has been shown in exhibits from France to Abu Dhabi, according to his profile with the USDA Forest Services.

Oldham, an Oregon-based artist, will spend her residency using video game and architectural technology to morph current 360-degree New York City landscapes into images of "ideal future city that blends nature and urban landscape in profound ways that are not technologically possible yet."

For inspiration, Oldham said she plans to interview dozens of NYC Parks volunteers and local volunteers on their wildest dreams and goals for incorporating nature into the city. She ultimately plans to sell the fantasy futuristic cityscape images to the public online.

Gauthier and Oldham won't have a set schedule at the Urban Field Station, but working from the post will allow them to embed with researchers in meetings and out in the field, Lalor said. Both artists will get a $1,500 stipend for their time at the research station.

After their yearly residency is up, both artists' projects will be unveiled in an art show at the Arsenal Gallery projects. Past residents' projects, including everything from a floating farm to an NYC tree alphabet, are on display at the gallery's current "City As An Ecosystem" art exhibit, which runs through Nov. 23.

Lead image: The "Swale" floating farm exhibit by 2016 UFS artist-in-residence Mary Mattingly. Photo by Mary Mattingly for the NYC Parks Department