Timecast

My work ranges from site-specific projects to installations and public art. I create an interactive space that is informed by the actual place -- its history, people and spatial narrative. This approach requires detective-like investigation and quasi-archeological research, exploring sociological an…  more

My work ranges from site-specific projects to installations and public art. I create an interactive space that is informed by the actual place -- its history, people and spatial narrative. This approach requires detective-like investigation and quasi-archeological research, exploring sociological and psychological aspects of each site. Immediate physical and social context influences the form, content, and choice of materials and media.

I see my artist’s identity as inevitably “hybrid” – in my case, part sculptor, journalist, poet, architect, and urban designer. Materials and methodology follow upon the necessary diversity of evolving concepts as a project reveals its conditions. I see this process as an excavation of meanings – cultural, geopolitical, social, personal – that lie hidden within the materials themselves. By revealing personal memories, collective histories, unacknowledged myths, and contradictory issues, I try to open up key social and personal reserves that can galvanize public interaction. Art, after all, has the power to deconstruct the blockages of social energy and serve as a catalyst to new vision and public self-discovery. My goal is to create artwork that provokes and revives a site and wakes people up to the poetry of place.

I am intrigued by the sense of scale, both human and civic, and how relatively small change can enhance private experience within the public setting. A truly livable space should stand the test of time. It spurs social communication and inspires reconstruction. When history is brought to the surface through public art, it can serve as source for the renewal of cultural identity and the evolution of social values.

My goal is to create works that attract people to possibility where and as they live. The development and realization of art in public is a dialogue with a place and its time – land and substance, its past, its people, the future they create – made new, immediate, and somehow timeless.

New York 2006

The Columbia Street Bikeway will be the first built section of the Brooklyn Greenway. Cut off from the rest of Brooklyn, this neighborhood has developed a very distinct character. The bikeway will create new access to a neighborhood nestled between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Brooklyn Batter…  more

The Columbia Street Bikeway will be the first built section of the Brooklyn Greenway. Cut off from the rest of Brooklyn, this neighborhood has developed a very distinct character. The bikeway will create new access to a neighborhood nestled between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and active Port Authority waterfront property.

The Columbia Street landscape was designed at two speeds, the speed of the pedestrian and the speed of the bicyclist. The pedestrian speed of the retail and residential area was accomplished through additional street tree plantings and continuous cobble bands. The continuous tree pits use structural soil to promote tree health. The artists work also speaks to a pedestrian level experience, allowing the user to discover the intricate pieces periodically as they travel through the streetscape.

The bikeway design moves with the faster rhythm of the bicycle. Large patterns of colored granite combine with street trees enhance the feeling of speed along the bikeway. While the tree selection in the pedestrian zone is smaller and sometimes flowering, the bikeway street trees offer a larger scale experience of pattern.

The Columbia Street District is a stretch of land just off the Red Hook waterfront south of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. With views of the Manhattan skyline crowned by the Statue of Liberty, Columbia Street could have been a prime piece of New York real estate if not for two Robert Moses-era high…  more

The Columbia Street District is a stretch of land just off the Red Hook waterfront south of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. With views of the Manhattan skyline crowned by the Statue of Liberty, Columbia Street could have been a prime piece of New York real estate if not for two Robert Moses-era highways (the Gowanus Expressway and the BQE) that cleave it from the mainland on one side, and the busy Port Authority Red Hook Container Terminal on the other. Over the past decade, the City and local community groups have worked to spur a Columbia Street District renaissance. The City’s Columbia Street Urban Renewal Plan has encouraged an influx of residential development, and the Port Authority has been pressed to improve public access to its waterfront.

The Reconstruction of Columbia Street project, sponsored by New York City’s Department of Transportation and Department of Design and Construction, is the most recent effort to revitalize the neighborhood. Started in 2005 and projected for completion by the spring of 2008, the project includes roadway surface and signage improvements as well as green space, a bikeway and pedestrian walkway, and enhanced waterfront access. It will be the first stage of a proposed Brooklyn Greenway, to cover 14 miles (~22.5 km) of the waterfront from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge. In accordance with the City’s Percent for Art Program, requiring that one percent of the budget for eligible city-funded construction projects be spent on artwork, the Columbia Street project includes a piece by Nobuho Nagasawa entitled Timecast. Nagasawa’s sitespecific artwork, Timecast, consists of precisely traced silhouettes of shadows cast by the young tree plantings, sandblasted onto the sidewalk – these will become permanent memory traces of Columbia Street revival’s hopeful beginnings.

Columbia Street Improvement
Van Brunt Street between the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Degraw Street; Degraw Street between Van Brunt and Columbia Street; Columbia Street between Degraw Street and Atlantic Avenue

Year of construction: 2007-2008

Construction budget:
$20 million (~13,9 million euro)

Public f…  more

Columbia Street Improvement
Van Brunt Street between the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Degraw Street; Degraw Street between Van Brunt and Columbia Street; Columbia Street between Degraw Street and Atlantic Avenue

Year of construction: 2007-2008

Construction budget:
$20 million (~13,9 million euro)

Public funds committed to date:

$20 million (~13,9 million euro)

Total length: 2740 linear feet (~835 m)

Client: New York City Department of Design
and Construction and New York City
Department of Transportation

New York City agencies involved:
Department of Design and Construction,
Department of Transportation, Department
of Environmental Protection, Department
of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art Program,
Department of Parks and Recreation

Nobuho Nagasawa, Artist

Jennifer Cooper, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects