Eco-Art and Environmental Justice in New Bedford MA

For this panel, Anna Dempsey analyzes her eco-art project Vestibules, a place-based, ecologically restorative artwork that draws from New Bedford, Massachusetts’ environmental and cultural histories. The project, which supports the city’s environmental justice initiative, combines wetland restoration with aesthetically engaging, community place-making public art installations. This living eco-artwork, which will remediate a waterlogged area in New Bedford’s Brooklawn Park, offers both practical and long-term environmental solutions. The rain garden will filter, restore, redirect, and redistribute water more consistently—and help enhance the health and well-being of community residents, while native plants, trees, grasses, rocks, and shells will function as visual invitational cues.

Given that Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Quaker and Abolitionist Daniel Ricketson roamed Brooklawn Park’s green spaces—and gathered at the “Shanty” Ricketson built—co-project directors Katy Rodden Walker and Anna Dempsey plan to build a temporary shelter that will remind residents of their ecological, historical, and cultural past. In this space, they will encourage school-age children and adults to share their poetry and stories about their park wanderings and connections to the natural world.

The “Shanty’ will also link site-responsive artworks, and the living eco-installation (rain garden and art bridge) to the community and its histories. Finally, the co-directors will ask artists to respond to the collected content as they shape their creative installations. As the project progresses, residents will be invited to join nature walks, where they can speak with all the artists about the site-specific work they created for the Vestibules project.