The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is an 8 foot-tall, public Tuckahoe marble, bronze, and glass sculpture. Tuckahoe marble became extremely popular in the early 1800s as a building material for public buildings and other large installations. It was used to build Borough Hall, New York’s Federal Hall, the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square, Manhattan’s historic Marble Cemetery, and more. This historic Tuckahoe marble has mostly been quarried. I found remains in a former marble quarry turned Marriott Suites construction site in Tuckahoe, New York. Today, the story of this historic Tuckahoe marble is largely lost. What was once monumental has fallen victim to time. This Tuckahoe marble is encased inside of molten glass, generating a transparent, crystalline form. This form is embedded in a bronze cast piece of an organism known as Pando found in Utah's Fishlake National Forest. The glass and marble form merges with the bronze. This work suspends the marble structural material in glass, crystallizing its impermanence while contextualizing it in relation to Pando. Pando has been growing for at least 80,000 years and is the world's largest organism by mass. It has created a forest of thousands of genetically identical quaking aspen trees, which all stem from a single root system.
The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is coupled with The Sound of Pando In Collaboration with Jerry J. Adams and the SoundMapApp
The Sound of Pando is the recorded electrical differential between the leaves and the roots of Pando translated into sound.
This project is linked to Sound Of A Path
Sound Of A Path was made in search of trees with stories of survival throughout the United States. These trees have survived drought, fire, time, and lived, perhaps against all odds.
For the full Mobile SoundMapApp experience click here on iOS
Click HERE to see a Map of Sound Of A Path on IOS
The artwork is exhibited as part of NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program. For more than 50 years, the program has brought contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks, making New York City one of the world’s largest open-air galleries. The agency has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, NYC Parks has collaborated with arts organizations and artists to produce more than 2,000 public artworks by 1,300 notable and emerging artists in more than 200 parks. For more information, please visit nyc.gov/parks/art
The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts.
