[ISEA2011] Panel: Pa­tri­cia Watts – Pub­lic Art Ecol­ogy in North Amer­ica

Panel Statement

Panel: Public Art of the Sustainable City

How can pub­lic art uti­lize new tech­nolo­gies to cre­ate eco­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that con­tributes to both the aes­thet­ics and sus­tain­abil­ity of cities? In this talk, I will give ex­am­ples of in­no­v­a­tive “green” Pub­lic Art Mas­ter Plans in North Amer­ica that have been de­vel­oped in the last decade, and dis­cuss spe­cific artists and pro­jects that both har­ness and ex­press the po­ten­tial of tech­nol­ogy to ad­dress global re­source con­ser­va­tion.

  • Pa­tri­cia Watts has cu­rated nu­mer­ous ex­hi­bi­tions with site spe­cific in­stal­la­tions in the pub­lic sphere in­clud­ing a large scale tem­po­rary wind en­ergy in­stal­la­tion en­ti­tled Wind­sock Cur­rents on Crissy Field in the Pre­sidio, San Fran­cisco, for UN World En­vi­ron­ment Day (2005). She has par­tic­i­pated on four Amer­i­cans for the Arts “Green” Pub­lic Art Net­work pan­els at their an­nual con­fer­ences and a we­bi­nar fo­cused on the artist se­lec­tion process. Watts was Chief Cu­ra­tor at the Sonoma County Mu­seum, Cal­i­for­nia (USA) from 2005-2008.  ecoart­space is a non­profit plat­form pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for artists who ad­dress the human/na­ture re­la­tion­ship in the vi­sual arts. Since 1999 they have col­lab­o­rated with over 150 or­ga­ni­za­tions to pro­duce more than 40 ex­hi­bi­tions, 100 pro­grams, work­ing with 400 + artists in 15 states na­tion­ally and 8 coun­tries in­ter­na­tion­ally. patriciawatts.blogspot.com