Hey, there! Log in / Register
Channel changing floating plants
By adamg on Mon, 04/28/2014 - 1:04pm
Fort Point Arts Community gives us a look at the newest art installation in Fort Point Channel: Tropical Fort Point by Peter Agoos:
The struggle for quality public open space in the neighborhood and the likelihood of climate change-induced rising sea levels are the conceptual parents of Tropical Fort Point. Inspired in part by seeing the Sudbury River at spring flood turning the adjacent wetland woods into wooded wetlands - trees apparently growing out of a lake, with an occasional canoe or kayak slipping between the trunks - the concept was initially planned as an evergreen installation called Fort Point Forest. The design evolved to embrace the low centers of gravity, salt-resistance, and wind-shedding characteristics of Majesty Palms and grew the new title of Tropical Fort Point. This tongue-in-cheek preview of the effect of rising tides stakes a claim to the Channel wetscape as an unexploited green space.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Quality Open Space?
We spent a few billion cleaning the harbor. Many billion more taking down the artery to put traffic underground.
There is a bike / walking path along the FPC where there never was one. The Harborwalk in the area has been greatly expanded over the past 15 years. There is a massive amount of quality open space all around you.
Castle Island / The Sugar Bowl, T M Street Beach, The Boston Common and Public Garden. The Esplanade, the North Point Park, are all a lot closer to FPC than I am from my local baseball diamond.
What the hell more does the "artist" community want? Before everyone screams at me - I say "artist" that way because, yes there are some great artists living in the FPC area, but also as someone who worked in the area years ago there are also a fair number of handbag bedazzlers passing as artists.
This is the City, You know people / buildings / cars / planes / trains, Dunkin Donut cups, dog crap on the sidewalk, etc. It isn't Topsfield. If you want open space - work for it. The great grassing of the Summer Street sidewalk of 2000 didn't work, this installation won't either. You want a park? Organize. Pressure your state / city / federal legislatures. Feather dusters on the Channel aren't going to get it done.
Who put capsicum in your knickers?
Not today - every day?
So people are putting art in the channel.
So fucking what?
Why do you hate everyone and everything? Why don't YOU move to Topsfield, where "your co-op is much more than mulch!"?
The city is full of *gasp* OTHER PEOPLE. Deal with it, please.
Right back at you
The city is full of *gasp* OTHER PEOPLE. Deal with it, please!
You can't be a proper
..Gen X Harridan without fulfilling your daily scolding quota.
I pitch in and try to provide periodic scolding opportunities so the numbers come out right.
Meanwhile have an Art Bench. https://flic.kr/p/nsuBZi
Along Fort Point Channel, no less.
I guess I hit a nerve.
Did the bedazzle comment hit a little to close to home? I don't live right in the city any more, but don't you ever, ever tell me to get out. You sound like you've got a Ron Paul sticker and deer head mud flaps on your Schwinn with that comment.
For years the Fort Point Community has been going on about the need for open space, yet since I have been watching them (1999) not a lick has gotten done, save for some trees on Summer Street. Instead it has been art installations where I've said to myself, wouldn't it be better to establish what you want, go about the means of achieving it, and then be all happy about it. Instead it is another piece of floating art. Some of which has been great mind you. Kudos to whomever dumped the folding chair in the channel back many years ago at the corner of Dot. Ave. and Summer. That piece spoke to me about how the tide never seems to move that folding chair or then again maybe somebody just threw a chair into the channel.
If the Fort Point Community got off their arses and presented a plan, say for maybe a set aside when the PO Parking Area on A Street gets built, or something like that, maybe something might get done. I guess they are just going to have to settle for the quality open space I mentioned earlier, plus the Children's Museum, the One Channel Center Park, the public art on Ramp Street, etc. It's such a pity to have such lousy open space in one's area.
Mad SG, throw your bike lock down your knickers and make the world a better place, will you?
Is there any art that you don't hate?
When anybody points out your haterade, well, you hate all over them, too, in as ridiculous a way as possible.
Seriously, if you don't live or work anywhere near this or the Poe statue, do you really think that your "critiques" matter? Especially when they seem based on photos and plans and not based on firsthand experience of the work. OMFG SOMEONE INJURED ME BECAUSE I WASN'T ASKED MY OPINION EVEN THOUGH I'LL NEVER SEE THIS MYSELF !!!!!!!
A good vinegar wash will take the pepper spray out of your jockey shorts. Oh, and go ride your bike on the path on the north side of the Channel, see what happens.
FYI I despise bedazzled stuff, too - I just don't think that it should be banned because I happen to dislike it.
Some good points among the anger.
John - I think you make an awesome point about the Fort Point community being very week. It seems like it always has been, almost to the point of Fort Point no longer existing, and now being the Innovation District. I've certainly gotten frustrated with the lack of organization the artist community has put up in the handful of years I've worked there.
And you're right, there is some greenspace in the area, the tiny Wormwood park or the channel walk in front of the Children's Museum. Personally I think the artist was probably more like "Hey, I'll put some little plants in the water", and then came up with a bullshit artists' statement about the whole piece. It's what I'd do.
And whether or not the artist intended to bemoan a perceived lack of parks in the area, I'm still going to enjoy the little plants the hundreds of times I'll cross the channel while they're there.
This is the best one yet
This is the best art installation I've seen in the Fort Point Channel (beats the pants off of the naked mannequins in zorbs art piece).
I hope they leaf it here for a while.
Did you see the chairs last summer?
Some were pretty silly, but most were actually comfortable and useful.
.....but the point is the
.....but the point is the area could use some more benches not an "art" exhibit of different bench designs which is then removed and we're now back where we started... not enough benches (although maybe awareness (whatever that means) of the lack of benches was raised).
And while I'm venting here how about this.... the BSA has a sign about their current exhibit on mobility in the city blocking a good portion of a busy sidewalk....
and to
think that the water there used to be green.
It still is
Seasonally, when the plankton get it going on.
Swirl
I'm talking the 70's channel by the Dover street bridge. It was not algae or plankton but man made, chemical and human waste.
Very much like the art
not so big on the message, though. Open space matters, but fundamentally, urban form depends onit being fairly restricted. Boston has a good mix now, as John Costello points out. The notion that we don't have enough, or that every new building requires a patch of grass in front of the bricks is ill-informed.
Is the Channel under threat of being filled-in?
Considering what happened to the rest of the South Bay, does it still have a purpose? I don't see any shipping activity ...
There are water intakes for Gillette, but is that the only reason this remnant survives? It isn't exactly a novel or protected ecosystem, either.
I wonder if it is in jeopardy of being filled in and built on in the future.
Naaaah
Probably just sell the air rights. That way everyone wins.
The preservationists get to keep the channel.
The developers get their new project.
The politicians will hand out tax credits for building the platform to build on in return for campaign contributions.
On a more serious note- looks rather harmless - if not downright pleasant - from the picture anyway.