ART Inside a Floating, Eco-Conscious Art Project By WENDY VOGEL JUNE 14, 2016

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The New York Times Style Magazine 14 June 2016 ART Inside a Floating, Eco-Conscious Art Project By WENDY VOGEL JUNE 14, 2016 Mary Mattingly s WetLand Credit Lori Hawkins/courtesy of Parrish Art

1 The New York Times Style Magazine 14 June 2016 ART Inside a Floating, Eco-Conscious Art Project By WENDY VOGEL JUNE 14, 2016 Mary Mattingly s WetLand Credit Lori Hawkins/courtesy of Parrish Art Museum This summer on Long Island s East End, one exhibition features artwork that s a far cry from the stereotypical blue-chip Hamptons summer style, with utopian aspirations and often provisional aesthetics. Radical Seafaring, organized by the Parrish Art Museum curator Andrea Grover, brings together 25 artists and collectives who create, as she writes, land art, only afloat : installations and performances designed to be experienced off dry land. The show traces the history of the genre, from midcentury Conceptualists such as Bas Jan Ader (who was tragically lost at sea during a 1975 sailing performance), Chris Burden and the obscure Japanese collective The Play to contemporary makers like Mark Dion, Duke Riley and Swoon. And for two weeks this summer, the New York-based artist Mary Mattingly brings the exhibition truly offshore with WetLand, a houseboat sculpture docked beside yachts at the Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.

2 There s a big sinkhole of using and then extracting in urban centers, Mattingly, shown here aboard the boat, says. Her works, like WetLand, seek to inspire policy change in cities by rethinking ways of using common spaces, including New York s waterways. Mattingly, 37, follows the tradition of environmental artists who devise alternative ways of living in the face of impending ecological disaster: she seeks to explore what you can do on the water that you can t do on land, she says, and considers the sea an extension of the commons. In a 2009 work, the Waterpod project, Mattingly and four others lived on a self-sustaining barge that navigated New York s waterways, kitted out with solar energy, edible plants, a water filtration system and chicken coop. Mattingly initially conceived WetLand a repurposed 1971 Rockwell Whitcraft houseboat for the Philadelphia nonprofit FringeArts in Collaborating with over 30 organizations, Mattingly gutted the 45-by-12-foot vessel, outfitting it with solar panels and varied species of wood stripped from a gym floor in Iowa. She describes the dramatically sloping boat as something between sinking and rising, a shack and a palace. It symbolically evokes the housing market crash, and is literally reminiscent of collapsing homes.

WetLand was inspired by the mortgage crisis and Mattingly s witnessing shoreline erosion on a trip to Alaska. Houses were literally falling into the ocean, she says.

3 WetLand was inspired by the mortgage crisis and Mattingly s witnessing shoreline erosion on a trip to Alaska. Houses were literally falling into the ocean, she says. As people try to understand what these extreme shifts in climate and rapid change in biodiversity means, WetLand could be a monument to loss, and a process of understanding that. At the Parrish, as in Philadelphia, WetLand functions as a semisustainable residency and a platform for Mattingly to demonstrate DIY solutions. The boat contains a rainwater purification system, a composting toilet, a bathtub, a library and edible perennial plants. The project, and Mattingly herself, attract a loyal following last Wednesday, a duck even spontaneously laid eggs on the vessel. And the utopian thinking that informs WetLand carries through to Mattingly s next venture, Swale, which launches at the end of this month: a floating food forest, host to perennial crops like figs and huckleberries, on a 130-by-110-foot barge that will sail around the city

As people try to understand what these extreme shifts in climate and rapid change in biodiversity means, WetLand could be a monument to loss, and a

4 . WetLand was inspired by the mortgage crisis and Mattingly s witnessing shoreline erosion on a trip to Alaska. Houses were literally falling into the ocean, she says. As people try to understand what these extreme shifts in climate and rapid change in biodiversity means, WetLand could be a monument to loss, and a process of understanding that. Mattingly places a plant under a skylight in the solar-powered WetLand. Her next project, a floating food forest called Swale, launches at the end of the month in New York s waterways. We want public food to exist in public space, the artist says.

5 In the first few days after WetLand arrived in Sag Harbor, a duck laid eggs on the boat. Radical Seafaring is on view through July 24 at Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, NY, parrishart.org. WetLand is on view through June 23 at the Long Wharf at Sag Harbor. A version of this article appears in print on June 19, 2016, on page ST3 of the New York edition with the headline: Art Matters; A Sculpture at Sea.

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