Saturday, July 25, 2009

"Flooded Chambers Maid", an accidental playground in Madison Square Park, NYC, Jessica Stockholder, 2009








"...the uptown end of the central lawn was already crowded with children playing on a multicolored triangular platform that looked as though it had been made from giant Lego blocks. The children clambered up and down, tossing balls, yelling gleefully and digging in a square of blue rubber mulch that lay on the ground beneath this structure. Their mothers and baby sitters lounged alongside them, sitting on the platform or watching from a set of adjoining turquoise bleachers."

Jessica Stockholder's installation was intended to be a "play on the concept of women’s work and service work, as well as art making...which incorporates industrial materials and ready-made manufactured objects, and its brightly colored parts combine to create something of a three-dimensional abstract painting in space."

But it has been quickly adopted as a playground.

“The minute the blue mulch went down...we e-mailed Jessica and said: ‘This is a sandbox. What kid wouldn’t want to play?’ And in fact by the next day a kid had made mounds and had a truck in there.” (The solution: Park employees rake and reshape the mulch twice a day.)"
Top two photos from anaba; remaining images and quotes from an article at the New York Times with photos by Tony Conicola.

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