“Protecting Our Seagrass Habitat“

Fort Point Arts Community, 16 October, 2021

“Protecting our Seagrass Habitat” was a temporary paper art installation created with public participation at 300 Summer Street, Boston. This environmental arts project was funded by a grant I received from Fort Point Arts Community to building awareness of our declining seagrass habitats and discuss solutions to help protect the fragile ecosystem. This project aims to highlight how positive intervention can impact the water quality and the health of our seagrass habitats. My goal was to initiate “Dialogue through Making”.

We began the two day event experimenting with scoring, bending and cutting different marine animal shapes. I envisioned light and white paper mixing to create dramatic movement. I had no idea how beautiful and unique each participants contribution would be for final installation.

Thanks to Ashley Desrosiers (ashddesign.com) we were able to create my new seagrass flyer which was used as a guide for our project. With Ashley’s graphic design skills we could bring images of how seagrass stores Carbon, how the habitat protects us from shore erosion and selection of marine animals dependent on the ecosystem.

The new seagrass flyer can be downloaded here.

The wealth of creativity the public brought to the project was wonderful. I had originally made very abstract samples of marine life in seagrass ecosystems yet the participants made such a contribution that I could not have imagined. I loved the enthusiasm and versatility of ideas!

Here are examples of work in progress. Who would have thought the contribution of everyone would make such an amazing installation!

More artists at work!

My goal was to bring about more awareness of our declining ecosystem through art. “ Dialogue through art” – the conversations we shared while creating our marine animals & plants was amazing. 11 year old Nico( the curly one below) taught me about the 52 whale, he was enthusiastically sharing his knowledge on this amazing whale-priceless.

Ecologist Julie Simpsons from MIT Sea Grant gave an incredible talk on seagrass. Her overview of the importance of the habitat led to many fascinating questions from the participants. Thank you Julie for doing an amazing job with the mask on!

I am grateful for the grant from Fort Point Arts Community, the space to experiment and everyone that came to participate in our seagrass installation! Also thank you everyone that helped me get organized behind the scenes- a big thank you to Mild who helped set up and took great photos. Thank you Ashely, Lara, Jeff, Kelly, Brian, Ben, Tina, Patrick, Erinn, Roseanne and Christine. What made this project extra special was the creativity, enthusiasm and joy everyone brought with them- thank you for making my weekend special!