MONUMENT TO RESTORATION

AN EXPERIMENTAL SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION MADE OF INVASIVE SPECIES

Monument to Restoration is an experimental, site specific installation sculpture made of an invasive species, Phragmites australis. The project is a meditation about monuments and how we chose to either venerate or commemorate people, eras, and events. In this case, I’m thinking about the climate crises as an emergent, contemporary ‘event’, and all that will be lost or changed, using a changed landscape as a medium for this thought. The paradox of the site, a decommissioned oil storage ground, now covered in a monocrop of invasives but used by a few progressive urban programs, lends itself to this questioning and meditation on climate change, restoration, and craft.

Phragmites is an invasive reed that grows about 8 feet tall in fresh and brackish water. It came to the US in ship ballast and has since spread to be ubiquitous in east coast wetlands and the great lakes. It totally outcompetes native species, taking away food sources, decreasing biodiversity, and increasing organic matter that fills in wetlands over time, changing the very makeup of the land.

The site is a 6.5 acre decommissioned oil storage facility in East Boston. Four 120' circular concrete slabs on which used to be oil tanks lie on the ground covered by a few inches of sediment, surrounded by a monocrop of phragmites. This site is this strange urban wilderness where you can just see the peaks of bridges and houses but are totally engulfed in this wild yet unnatural world.

It’s surreal: some of my favorite experiences at the site are when I’ve been called up from working by a mysterious white noise to find myself face to face with unfathomably large ships carrying oil passing by tug boat through the Chelsea creek, some 40 feet away. These ships and the tales I give to the shiphands are imposing, a reminder of how ingrained lives are in our worldwide carbon economy. While the fossil fuel infrastructure disturbs me, this intimate window into the supply chain has been strangely magical. Isolated in the phragmites, it feels like being let in on a secret when these city-sized ships slide through the creek, so nearly silently.

The intermittent performance of the ships’ arrival or departure, guided by loyal tugboats, has added to the story of this project - the paradoxical and unsought beauty in the cognisant degradation of the earth with my tiny attempt to say something about it standing 12 feet tall.

I grew up in a partially thatched home in rural England and was captivated as a child when it was repaired. This love for the craft lay dormant until a few years ago in 2021 when visiting family in Denmark I came across my first reference that is listed, the Wadden Sea Visitor’s Center by Dorte Mandrup. This was such a striking example of an ancient and universal craft, thatched roofs exist wherever there is long grass, being used for a highly contemporary and sustainable application. I’ve always been enchanted by this intersection of craft, fine art, and architecture and this building’s fluidity, innovation, and tradition literally stopped me in my tracks as I tightly U-turned on my bike to sneak a look after closing hours. I’ve been thinking about thatching in the 3 years since to the extent that I was researching thatching courses to take post grad….

In the summer of 2024, I interned at the Hughes Lab at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center where we collaborated with The Emerald Tutu, an experimental urban shoreline adaptation project. The team is making small floating wetlands and what I’ve dubbed intertidal raised beds, out of phragmites as both the structure and substrate for restoration, thus creating an oxymoronic relationship in which the doubted invasive becomes a tool to combat its own dominance. Their structures were inadvertently beautiful and I started sketching sculpture ideas. I realized that though this site is so degraded, it is totally full of material and aesthetic potential, and there was no need to wait for a summer course!

Aesthetically, Phragmites can be pretty stunning. It creates dense swaths over 8 feet tall that are like endlessly deep almost impenetrable walls. In some ways, a patch of Phramites is intriguing - it creates another world within its density in which someone who battles their way inside is engulfed in stems, leaves, and seeds but may be lucky enough to stumble upon an animal track, and be immersed for a moment in another being’s home with walls that are also unfamiliar to them. I wanted to further the intruige to create an abstract sculpture in this strange site.

Thinking cheap and easy, I decided that Phragmites and chicken wire, which is often used as a subtle top layer on thatched roofs to increase resilience, would be my main materials.

I loved my initial sketches and decided to commit to a large U-shape. The subverted triumphal arch calls attention to failures and losses that have caused and are caused by the climate crisis, but it also invites interaction. Thatch is so tactile and it was important that the structure exemplifies this. The large U was intended to be a bench where users are made to face each other. Unfortunately I ran out of time for the 2nd vertical arm, so it’s an L, but it is still monumental in scale and could fit more than one.

Highly important in the procress was the help of many friends and Climate Corp fellows who worked with The Emerald Tutu. This project marked the first time that I lead a creative collaboration that was truly my own, rather than a creative team working for a client. Leading a project while doing something totally experimental with very minimal prior related experience was a fun challenge. It’s one thing to lead when you know how to attain an outcome, and another when you’re totally winging it! I was grateful to have minds to run ideas by and collaborate on issues that arose throughout the process. There was then a challenge in having to rescind some control - having so many hands to help means that there is some variety in technique, neatness, or density of thatching that I might have found frustrating and not to the specifications of the image in my head, but is overwhelmingly special. It’s important to embrace these evolutions - be assertive and ambitious while fluid and gracious.

These friends helped with all parts of the process from forming the internal structure from PVC, harvesting, bundling, and trimming the Phragmites, to the tedious and meditative thatching process, figuring out what to do when the basin in a site flooded..., assembly of the finished pieces, and of course by celebrating with a mid-December marsh rave!