Color-Coded Garden: Maria Loboda

FREIZE ART FAIR

May 10-13

By Phyllis Odessey
I’ve worked on Randall’s Island for over 6 years.  Every year brings surprises.  2012 was the first year the Frieze Art Fair was held on Randall’s Island.  Freize transforms the event lawn with the largest tent erected in the Northeast.  Cecilia Alemani is the curator of Freize Projects, a program of artists’ commissions.  The participating artists in 2013 are;  Liz Blynn, Maria Loboda, Mateo Tannatt, Andra Ursuta, Marianne Vitale.  The program also includes a special tribute to legendary artist run restaurant Food, originally conceived by Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Godden in 1971 and an original text by novelist Ben Marcus.

We have been helping Maria Loboda install her project:  Color-Coded Garden.  Two of our staff members, James C. and James N. have been working with Maria laying out plants that arrived from Otto Kiel Nursery yesterday.

“Maria Loboda’s work analyzes systems of communications, underscoring the transformative power of languages and codes. Reflecting upon the relationship between nature and verbal communication, Loboda has realized a number of works in which the natural world is analyzed through the lens of language. Taking as inspiration the lush parkland of Randall’s Island, the artist will turn an area of the park into a color-coded garden, an exact replica of an illustration of a European interior design motif from the 19th century. Interested in the precision of color mapping, the artist will translate the two-dimensional image into a living landscape of plants, flowers and shrubs, highlighting not only the relationship between interior and exterior, but also between two and three-dimensional landscapes. from freizeprojectsny.org

Here are a few snapshots of the beginning stages of the plant layout.

 

Bridges over Randall’s Island

By James C.

My name is James Carroll and I’m a new gardener here at Randall’s Island. I’ve been learning about horticulture at the New York Botanical Gardens and the Queens Botanical Gardens and I’m very excited to be applying my gardening skills on this interesting island.

New York City is known for it’s famous bridges, the Brooklyn Bridge perhaps being the most iconic. But few are familiar with the architectural importance of the bridges over Randall’s Island. The Hell Gate Bridge and the Triborough Bridge are both unique representations of architectural styles and periods in New York History.

The violent waterway known as Hell Gate today  was originally named Hellegat by the Dutch, which could mean “hell’s hole”. Like Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, where the creek nearby was named “Devil’s Spout” or Spuitende Duivel, the Dutch commonly named waterways in the low country in this manner.Today the converging currents of the East River are still rapid, despite being cleared of obstacles in the 19th century due to hundreds of shipwrecks.

The Bridge that spans Hell Gate was originally named, less excitingly, the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge. Initiated in 1912 and completed in 1916, the bridge linked the New York and Pennsylvania Railroad with the New England and New Haven railroad lines. Architect Gustav Lindenthal’s original design of the bridge’s approach ramps included a low steel lattice structure but was soon changed after concerns that the island’s asylum inmates would climb it to escape.

When completed it was the world’s longest steel arch bridge until the opening of the Bayonne Bridge in 1931. The Hell Gate Bridge was the source of inspiration for the Sydney Harbour Bridge which is 60% larger.

Today it serves both rail and passenger traffic and trains can be seen frequently passing over our gardens and urban farm. A recently completed bike path is located under the arches of the bridge allowing bicyclist to enjoy the grandeur of the bridge up close. Long term plans are currently under way to connect the Randall’s Island path to the South Bronx bikeway in Starlight Park.

 

While the Hell Gate Bridge could be argued to be the original tri borough bridge, it wasn’t until 1936 when Robert moses completed the present Triboro Bridge which provides vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The main bridge that connects Ward’s Island and Astoria is a fine example of art deco themes common in the 1930′s. The stepped columns recede in a ziggurat style similar to other projects from the 1930′s such as Rockefeller Center.

One such example of Art Deco architecture can be seen on Randall’s Island at the Triboro Bridge Authority Building which was Robert Moses’ headquarters during his reign over New York City as traffic czar and “master builder.”

The original cost of the Triboro Bridge was $60 million, greater than the Hoover Damn and one of the largest public works during the Great Depression.

The bridge was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in 2008 but is still commonly referred to as the Triboro.

This photo, taken in 1936 upon the completion of the Triboro Bridge, shows an unidentified building under the Hell Gate Bridge where our Urban Farm is  currently located. Many of the trees surrounding it have been cut down for sports fields, but many have been replanted with help from the MillionTreesNYC program.

Panorama of the Ward’s Island seen from Astoria Park, 2009

More photos and information on the Triboro Bridge at Forgotten NY here

Our Good Friends

By EunYoung Sebazco

  Miki Murashima is a Japanese daycare provider. She opened her Japanese daycare center 2009 in Astoria, Queens and has been teaching Japanese Language and Japanese culture to children. She has been serving infants and toddlers. She has also volunteered at African Impact’s project in Zimbabwe for helping African Lion Rehabilitation and Release into the Wild Program in the spring 2012.  She will lead small children’s activities at the first Cherry Blossom Festival.

  Juan Pablo Gomez is a certified Yoga instructor (www.juanpabloyoga.com). For over 15 years, he pursued a successful marketing career in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry.  His passion for yoga led to an alternate career path.  He believes that,  if practiced effectively, yoga can lead to a transformative experience in increased self awareness and actualization. His mission is to support his students in developing their own practices, ultimately identifying their own inner teacher.  He is bilingual in English and Spanish. Currently, he is one of the teachers at Yoga Agora, one of most popular yoga studios in NYC. His class will held on the waterfront garden lawn area on July 20th.