Arts & Entertainment

Annual Bayside Park Program Announces 4 Artists-In-Residence

The annual Urban Field Station's Artist in Residence Program will be hosted virtually this year out of Fort Totten Park in Bayside.

Two artists will create works about New York City, one about Honolulu and another about Santo Domingo.
Two artists will create works about New York City, one about Honolulu and another about Santo Domingo. (Shutterstock)

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Four artists in residence were named in the annual Urban Field Station’s Artist in Residence Program, hosted virtually this year out of Fort Totten Park in Bayside, according to a press release on Tuesday.

Cecile Chong, Sharon Heitzenroder, Nikki Lindt, and Kilia Llano were chosen as this year’s resident artists for their proposals that examine the intersection between art, urban ecology, and community-based design.

“Art is a form of inquiry, and encounters between science and art give us the chance to rediscover elements of both, yielding results that neither art nor science could create on its own,” said USDA Forest Service Network Coordinator Sarah Hines in a press release about this year’s residency.

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Lindt and Chong — whose work has been displayed in Sunset Park and more recently in Brooklyn’s Yi Gallery — will create works about New York City’s underground sound and immigrant communities, respectively.

Heitzenroder will work in Hawaii to document the loss of green space in Honolulu over the past 50-100 years, and Llano will create two migration-themed murals in the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where she was born.

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The residency program, which is now in its fifth year, is a collaboration between the artists and researchers, community members, and natural resource management specialists from NYC Parks, the USDA Forest Service, and The Nature of Cities, an urban planning organization.

Since the program is being held virtually this year because of the pandemic, there will also be teams working in Hawaii and the Dominican Republic.

“If you want to learn something new, something unexpected, it makes sense to put artists together with scientists, designers, planners, and activists,” said Executive Director and Publisher of The Nature of Cities, David Maddox, in the press release, pointing to the importance of collaboration in this interdisciplinary endeavor.

Until recently, Fort Totten Park, home of the well-preserved Civil War fortress, housed ambulances from across the country that were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, but it has since reopened for regular use.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Bayside-Douglaston