Stacy Levy

Stacy Levy (born 1960) is a sculptor who works with ecological natural patterns and processes, often using water and water flows as a medium.[1] Many of her works address environmental problems at the same time that they make the functioning of the environment visible.[2] Her studio is based in rural Pennsylvania, but she works on projects around the world.[3]

Stacy Levy
Born1960
Philadelphia, PA
NationalityUnited States
Alma materYale University, Tyler School of Art at Temple University
Known forSculpture
MovementEnvironmental art
AwardsHenry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award
Websitestacylevy.com

Biography

Stacy Levy studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. She graduated from Yale University with a BA in Sculpture, studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and graduated from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University with a MFA in Sculpture.[3][4]

Work
External video
“Calendar of rain started when somebody made a comment that it always rains on the weekends”, Science History Institute, 2013
A Rain Garden for Springside School, January 11, 2010

Stacy Levy uses the language of landscape and art to tell the ecological story of a site, drawing on both art and science.[5] Her projects reveal the sometime hidden natural world in the urban environment.[6] Stacy’s work integrates art with site design to create memorable places alive with nature and sensation. Her projects distill the essence of nature and reveal its processes to the user. Stacy works closely with building architects, landscape architects, engineers, horticulturalists and soil scientists to create artworks that allow natural systems like the infiltration of rainwater, to function and thrive. Through a lyrical approach to natural science, Levy blends an understanding of sustainable design and ecological concepts and harnesses the ephemeral changes of weather and light with the lasting presence of sculpture.

From rivers to runoff, Levy has explored the many facets of water: urban watersheds, storm water, hydrologic patterns and water treatment. Her installation "Calendar of Rain" creates a year-long record of precipitation, collected daily in shimmering glass jars.[7] Her project “Tide Poles” for the City of Yonkers' waterfront incorporates the use of LED technology to visually manifest the ebb and flow of the Hudson River tide.[8] Her projects "Tide Field" and "River Rooms" at Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia offer visitors new ways to become more aware of and engage with changes in the river.[9][10][11]

I'm trying to make a work that brings people down to meet the river, see the changes, so they might get to know it, and then they’ll get to love it, and then they’ll want to preserve it.”–Stacy Levy[12]

Levy has completed numerous rainwater pieces including a watershed rain terrace for Penn State University's new Arboretum,[13][5] and a rain garden for Springside School with the Philadelphia Water Department and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.[14][15] She has public commissions in New York,[16][17][18] Seattle,[19][20] Philadelphia,[10][11] Tampa,[21] Toronto [22] and Niigata, Japan.[23]

Recent works
Spiral Wetland

Spiral Wetland, 2013

Lake Fayetteville, Fayetteville, AR

Spiral Wetland is an eco-art project supported by the Walton ArtCenter as part of the Artosphere Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Lake Fayetteville.[24]

Spiral Wetland is made with native soft rush, Juncus effusus, growing in a closed-cell foam mat anchored to the lake’s floor. The plants help remove excess nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from the lake water, and the mat adds shade for fish habitat. Inspired by Spiral Jetty (1970), Robert Smithson’s famous earthwork sited in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, this spiral is a working earthwork floating on the surface of the lake.[24]

Tide Flowers at the Hudson River Park

Tide Flowers, 2012

Hudson River Park, Piers 34 and 25, New York, NY on hold

Hudson River Park Trust with Mathews Neilsen Landscape Architects

33 units 9’ wide Marine vinyl, steel, polycarbonate plastic, foam.

The Hudson River, brushing against the concrete and glass of the urban fabric, rises up and down twice a day with the eternal clock of the tides. This tidal activity connects us to the ocean, to the moon and to a daily schedule that is nature’s own.[25]

Tide Flowers will register the tidal movement with a simple visual presence of brilliantly-colored flowers blooming at high tide and closing at low tide.[26] Tide Flowers is made up of thirty-three flower units, each with six petals, attached to selected wooden piles on two piers. Twenty-five flowers will be placed in a field-like formation on selected pilings at the end of pier 25, visible from both the path and the new park. Eight additional tide flowers will be attached to pilings closer to the pathway to give park users a hint of the larger field of flowers beyond.[25]

River Eyelash

River Eyelash, 2005

Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, PA

3,000 painted buoys radiate out from the bulkhead of the Point State Park, like an eyelash for the city. The eyelash continuously changes formation in response to wind direction, speed of the currents and boat wakes.[27]

Kept Out

Kept Out, 2009-2010

Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA. Part of Edible Landscapes, curated by Amy Lipton

Kept Out consists of a pair of deer exclosures, the fenced areas to keep deer out: one built near the artist’s studio in a woodland in Pennsylvania’s Ridge and Valley region and the other at the woodlands edge of Schuylkill Center for Environmental and Education in the Piedmont ecosystem. Both sites face a great deal of deer pressure.[28]

AMD-Art - Project in Vintondale

AMD&Art Project, 1995 -2005.

Vintondale, Vintondale, PA

Collaboration with Julie Bargmann, Landscape Architect. Robert Deason, Hydrogeologist and T. Allan Comp Historian

Acid mine drainage pollutes hundreds of miles of streams in Pennsylvania. At Mine Number Six in Vintondale, in the coal mining region of south central Pennsylvania, artists, landscape architects, scientists and historians collaborated on ways to treat AMD while interpreting the coal mining history and the passive treatment processes. This project creates a public park and water treatment facility.[29]

Watermap - Friends' Central School

Watermap: Friends’ Central School, 2003

Wynnewood, PA

Tributaries of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers are deeply sandblasted into bluestone paved terrace. When it rains, the rainwater flows into the runnels of the tributaries and then into deeply inscribed Delaware River, creating a watershed in miniature.[30]

Cloud stones - Mineral Springs Park - Seattle Arts Council - Seattle, WA

Cloud Stones: Mineral Springs Park, Seattle Arts Council, 2004

Seattle, WA

The highly polished black stone domes reflect the sky and the clouds formations. Text sandblasted around the domes tells of the types of weather which these cloud formations bring. The white domes have more of evening presence, and their text tells of the moon and stars. As the light fades at dusk, the white domes remain bright while the dark domes sink into the shadows.[19][20]

Lotic Meander at the Ontario Science Centre
Lotic Meander headstone

Lotic Meander - Ontario Science Centre's Project Art, 2007

"Lotic Meander" is a serpentine walkway that resembles a dried riverbed, located outside the Ontario Science Centre's Great Hall.[31][32] Modelled on the meanderings of the Humber River, the snakelike stream is 91.4 metres long and winds along a path that takes up most of the Solar Patio.[33] The piece is made from 116 granite slabs from India, and 8 nearly perfect hemispherical or hemiellipsoidal black domes carved from boulders imported from China. The highly polished domes are similar, in appearance, to the domes used to house surveillance cameras.[34]

Along some of the curves of the path there are also nicely polished smooth round glass pebbles, in variously coloured translucent glass.

"Lotic" in the title refers to the ecosystems of different magnitudes of flowing water in nature.

Awards
  • 1992 Pew Fellowships in the Arts[35]
  • 1999 Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia
  • 2001 Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant
  • 2001, Excellence in Estuary Award, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Inc.[36]
  • 2010, 2010 Year in Review Award, Americans for the Arts Public Art Network, for "Ridge and Valley"[37]
  • 2015 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation.[38]
  • 2015, DC Water Green Infrastructure Challenge Award with Urban Rain Design and Nitsch Engineering[39]
  • 2018 Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education[2]
  • 2019, Woman of Environment Arts, Penn Futures[40]

References
  1. "Stacy Levy". Americans for the Arts. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  2. Catanese, Christina (October 15, 2018). "Art as Environmental Leadership: Stacy Levy to receive the Meigs award". Schuylkill Center. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  3. Spencer, Gayle Brennan (June 9, 2011). "Stacy Levy: Interpreting the Connections of Nature and the Built Environment through Art". Postcards from San Antonio. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  4. "Stacy Levy - Earthworks - Art - City of Kent, Washington". Ci.kent.wa.us. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
  5. Art Commission, The (October 18, 2017). "Collaborating with Nature & Science: The Eco-Art of Stacy Levy". CODAworx. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  6. "The Artists Leading the Conversation on Climate Change". Gobe Magazine. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  7. Dionisio, Jennifer (2013). "Calendar of Rain". Chemical Heritage Magazine. Chemical Heritage Foundation. 31 (1). Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  8. Hodara, Susan (December 30, 2007). "Redevelopment in Yonkers Spurs Public Art". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  9. Newhall, Edith (August 22, 2018). "Art to see in Philly now: Floating on the Schuylkill and on display at the airport". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  10. "Art@Bartram's Connecting the public to the Schuylkill River". Mural Arts Philadelphia. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  11. Crimmins, Peter (June 27, 2018). "Environmental artist aims to bring people closer to time and tide on the Schuylkill". WHYY. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  12. McElhinney, James Lancel. "O.T.W (On the Water) The Schuylkill River". James Lancel McElhinney. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  13. "Ridge and Valley at the Penn State Arboretum". Penn State University. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  14. Slavin, Matthew I. (2013). Sustainability in America's cities : creating the green metropolis. Washington, Covela, London: Island Press. p. 167. ISBN 9781597267410. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  15. "Schools and Stormwater: Part Two". Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. October 28, 2009. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  16. Dwyer, Jim (May 11, 2017). "Tracing the Waterways Beneath the Sidewalks of New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  17. "Rain is My Client". Waterfront Alliance. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  18. McEntee, Billy (October 25, 2018). "Thursday Spotlight: The Wizard of Inlet Park, Stacy Levy". GreenPointers.com. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  19. Westerlind, Linnea (June 1, 2017). Discovering Seattle parks : a local's guide (First ed.). Mountaineers Books. ISBN 9781680510010. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  20. Aguirre, Jesús. "Mineral Springs Park". Seattle Parks and Recreation. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  21. "Stacy Levy Tampa Wind, 2009". University of Southern Florida. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  22. Warkentin, John (2010). Creating memory : a guide to outdoor public sculpture in Toronto. Toronto, Ontario: Becker Associates in association with the City Institute at York University. ISBN 9780919387607. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  23. "Seeing Water: Stacy Levy and Eve Mosher in Conversation September 26, 2017". Woskob Family Gallery. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  24. Bartholomew, Dustin (May 9, 2013). "Artist Stacy Levy's 'Spiral Wetland' in place at Lake Fayetteville". Fayetteville Flyer. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  25. Kokai, Jennifer A. (June 15, 2017). Swim pretty : aquatic spectacles and the performance of race, gender, and nature. SIU Press. pp. 178–179. ISBN 978-0809336005. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  26. "Tide Flowers". Transmaterials. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  27. Smith, W. Gary (September 14, 2010). From art to landscape : unleashing creativity in garden design. Timber Press. p. 99. ISBN 9780881929737. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  28. "Beyond the Surface: Environmental Art in Action". Schuylkill Center. May 22, 2013. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  29. "STACY LEVY and JULIE BARGMANN AMD&ART PROJECT IN VINTONDALE, PA 2005" (PDF). Peconic Green Growth. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  30. "Stacy Levy". Mural Arts Philadelphia. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  31. Goddard, Peter (2007-03-04). "Rokeby lightens up with Science Centre sculpture". thestar.com. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
  32. "Ontario Science Centre: Project: Art". Ontariosciencecentre.ca. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
  33. Warkentin, John (2010). Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto. Toronto: Becker Associates in association with the City Institute at York University. pp. 241–242.
  34. "2008 Annual Convention: Sessions: Presenter Bios: Stacy Levy". Artsusa.org. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
  35. "Stacy Levy". Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  36. "Congratulationsto the Partnershipfor the DelawareEstuary's 2001Excellence in theEstuary Awardrecipients who were recognized onSeptember 25, 2001" (PDF). Estuary News : Newsletter of the Delaware Estuary. 12 (1): 1. 2001. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  37. Bartolomeo, Liz (June 24, 2010). "2010 Public Art Year in Review Announced". Americans for the Arts Public Art Network. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  38. "Artists-in-Residence". McColl Center for Art + Innovation. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  39. Zander, Amanda (2018). "Green Infrastructure Design Challenge". DC Water is Life. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  40. "Women in Conservation Award Winners". Susquehanna Life. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
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