We are excited to announce the re-launch of our visual arts program for 2024–2025, in partnership with Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
Our goals with Down to Earth are twofold. First, we aim to provide earning opportunities for outstanding DC-based artists by offering them a funded period to create new work. Second, we seek to illuminate and engage in meaningful dialogue about the effects of the climate crisis and its interconnectedness with systemic racism in our community, using art and the creative process as vehicles for these conversations. This is particularly critical given the existential nature of our climate emergency and the limited resources available for the community to learn and adapt.
For Winter and Spring 2024–2025, selected artists Billy Friebele, Andrew Kastner, and the Fourth Floor Design Collective will produce work examining the rich ecosystem of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, both above and below the water’s surface.
During the Winter (December 21, 2024 – March 20, 2025), Kastner and the Fourth Floor Design Collective will focus on life above the water by creating a hybrid digital experience for visitors that enhances their understanding and connection with the park’s landscape. Using point clouds as an interpretive medium, their vision is to overlay abstracted information onto the existing landscape, helping visitors learn more about the impacts of climate change.
This work is critical given projections for 2030 – just five years away – as reported by the independent watchdog organization Climate Central. Communities throughout the District, including the Yards in Ward 8, Kingman Island, Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Ward 7, and the Anacostia River Trail from Anacostia Park to Bladensburg Waterfront Park in Maryland, will experience extensive and frequent flooding. The effects of the climate crisis are occurring now, disproportionately affecting communities of color and low-income residents, such as those surrounding Kenilworth.
In the Spring (March 21 – June 19, 2025), Friebele will concentrate on the rich ecosystem just below the water’s surface, creating a floating camera device inspired by the water strider. This device will submerge a camera halfway into the water to record ripples on the water’s surface. Water striders use “ripple communication” to send messages through vibrations on the water, and Friebele plans to use the videos and photographs collected by this device to spark community conversations.
Artist Bios
Andrew Kastner is a digital media and environmental artist. His work is both a reflection of his longtime interest in human relations to the natural and material world and a life-altering stroke in 2022 that left him with severe aphasia and limitations with dexterity. Andrew has used photography, lidar scans, and extended reality technology to evolve his pre-stroke practice. While he always aspired to connect people to each other and their environment through his artistic translations, his efforts now have a new power; they are creating new–wordless–means of communication that tie all of us–human and non-human–together. Fourth Floor Design Collective (FFDC) will provide support through any logistical challenges. FFDC comprises Natalie Adam, based in New York, and Alex Morpurgo, based locally in Washington DC.
Billy Friebele is an artist working in the Washington, DC region. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Katzen Center for the Arts, and the Kreeger Museum among other venues nationally and internationally. Billy was a Hamiltonian Artist fellow and one of the first makers-in-residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Central to his research and teaching is a concern for the tension between our mediated digital experience and the materiality of the environment. He earned a BA in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Billy Friebele is an Associate Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.
Photo: Top left image by Andrew Kastner; bottom left image by Billy Friebele; right image is an edited photo of geese at the Kenilworth Aquatic Garden. Compiled and arranged by Julianne Brienza.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.