Alexandria Living Magazine photo
Groundswell art installation at Alexandria's waterfront is open to the public.
The City of Alexandria has unveiled its newest public art installation, Groundswell, in Alexandria’s Waterfront Park (1 Prince St.). This new temporary installation by artist Mark Reigelman is the third in the Site See: New Views in Old Town annual public art series, and will be on display through November.
Commissioned to create an original installation for Waterfront Park, Reigelman focused on Alexandria’s working waterfront as the shoreline crept further into the Potomac River. In his research, he learned that drastic measures manipulated the city’s shoreline. Starting in the 18th century, thousands of wood pilings were driven deeper and deeper into the Potomac River over time, thereby shifting the city’s waterfront over decades. This allowed Alexandria to develop and grow its sprawling dock into a major commercial port.
Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
"Groundswell" opens to public at Alexandria's waterfront.
Groundswell pays homage to this ever-evolving history and brings an element of play to the shoreline’s material topography. The installation features a ground mural depicting the floor of the Potomac River and more than 100 wood pilings throughout the site. They will range in heights from 12 to 42 inches, in accordance with the river floor topography or bathymetry. Each 14-inch-diameter piling is topped with a cobalt blue mirrored surface etched with growth rings that suggest the passing of time. They glisten in the light like the nearby water, reflecting the sky, as well as the faces of passersby. Reigelman hopes visitors will be immersed in this shimmering landscape as they navigate through the pilings, considering their place in the city’s history.
Photo by Laura Hatcher for City of Alexandria
"Groundswell" exhibit
The Site See temporary public art series highlights Waterfront Park as a civic space and is informed by the historic waterfront and neighboring community. Waterfront Park is a key location for original commissioned art in Alexandria. It follows Olalekan Jeyifous’s 2020 installation Wrought, Knit, Labors, Legacies and SOFTlab’s 2019 Mirror Mirror installation. Reigelman was selected to create this site-specific artwork by a community task force with the Alexandria Commission for the Arts’ approval. The City of Alexandria will also commission regional artists to create site-specific performances or activations in response to Groundswell later this year.
Visitors can see Groundswell at Waterfront Park from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Visit alexandriava.gov/PublicArt for more information about Groundswell and the Site See public art series.
Reigelman has also exhibited his work at other public sites, galleries and museums across the country. His works, Manifest Destiny! (San Francisco), White Cloud (Cleveland), Wood-Pile (Cleveland), Upriver-Downriver (Louisville, Ky.) and The Meeting House (Boston) have been recognized by the Americans for the Arts as being among the 50 most compelling public works across the country. His newest award-winning site-specific installations include Formation at the San Diego International Airport and Sweetwater at the former Domino Sugar Factory site in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Photo by Laura Hatcher for City of Alexandria
Artist Mark Reigelman pauses for a photo with his artwork "Groundswell" in Old Town Alexandria
Reigelman studied Sculpture and Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio and product design at Central Saint Martins University of the Arts in London. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
The following is a statement from the artist about his work on Groundswell:
"Children’s toys, fossilized biscuits, stamped stoneware, hundreds of shoes. These are a few examples of the items unearthed in excavations along the Alexandria waterfront over the years, demonstrating its role as an ongoing hub of activity and commerce. As such, drastic measures were taken to manipulate Alexandria’s connection to the water. In the late 18th century, for example, wooden ships were intentionally sunk in an effort to extend the city’s shoreline.
From a town standing upon lofty banks to one that bled deeper into the river each decade, these pilings created a fluctuating new boundary in the conversation between river and shore.
Groundswell seeks to recontextualize these quintessential maritime objects, pay homage to the space’s rich history, and bring an element of play to the shoreline’s material topography.
From 'Pondering Shorelines,' a paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, January 2020 by B. Skolnik:
For terrestrial archaeologists working in urban and waterfront settings like Alexandria, the water’s edge frequently represents a boundary that is seemingly fixed, beyond which is figuratively (and sometimes literally) outside of their jurisdiction. However, the water is the connective tissue that linked these port towns in the past and made them viable economic centers. Furthermore, the boundary between land and water cannot be thought of as a static line like it is frequently shown on historic maps. Just as there is topography on the land that shapes human activity, there is topography (or bathymetry) under the water that shapes human activity.
Groundswell consists of 102 14” raw wood pilings ranging in height from 12-42”, each topped with a cobalt-blue, reflective surface. The pilings’ undulating profile is determined by the topographical map illustrated in the ground mural, which is derived from the contours of the adjacent Potomac River. The tops on Groundswell’s pilings shimmer in the light like water, mimicking the unfixed shoreline and reflecting different angles of the sky and faces of passersby.
Etched into the surface of the shimmering blue acrylic are growth rings, which point to the passing of time and the ever-shifting waterfront boundary. Groundswell’s immersive orientation encourages visitors to navigate through the pilings’ grid-like ecosystem, considering their place in the city’s history at this moment in time."
