Public Water

On view through September 7, 2021

Join Prospect Park Alliance, More Art, NYC Parks and Brooklyn Public Library for Public Water, a new a public art project and installation by visual artist Mary Mattingly, who founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City. Public Water examines issues of water quality, access, privatization and infrastructure facing the NYC watershed, which provides more than a billion gallons of clean water daily to nine million state residents, and also feeds the Prospect Park watercourse. The project includes a water-filtering sculptural ecosystem, designed in connection with the launch of ecoWEIR, a natural filtration pilot project for the park’s manmade watercourse.

The park sculpture is a 10ft tall geodesic dome, designed as a structural ecosystem covered in native plants that filter water in a gravity-fed system that mimics the geologic features of the NYC watershed. The sculpture draws from the minerals and geologic features of the watershed to filter water. Public Water brings attention to New York City’s drinking water system in order to build more reciprocal exchanges between people who live in New York City’s drinking watershed and its drinking-water users in the city, to promote care and commons.

Learn more about Public Water and the history of NYC’s drinking water on the installation’s website.