Stunning Large Art Installation This Fall

Artist has 200 sculptures displayed internationally made from 100 tons of upcycled material

ASBURY PARK — The 10th anniversary of the acclaimed Wooden Walls project of public mural art on the boardwalk will be marked by a striking art installation this fall. It will be a large work by Portuguese activist and ecological artist, Bordalo II. The artist is famous for creating large scale, 2-D and 3-D animal sculptures from plastic trash to bring attention to a host of issues including overcon-sumption and waste, climate change, and protection of endangered and threatened species.

This particular project is jointly sponsored by Wooden Walls and the non-prof-it Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC), who’ll both fund it with grants and private donations. The installation will be located on the south side of the Third Avenue Pavillion, facing the children’s splash park. Palmetto restaurant is just inside.

This artist has done some stunning work around the world.

“This has been six years in the making,” said Jenn Hampton, the founder and curator of Wooden Walls and a member of the Asbury Park Arts Council.
This is the second such large installation for Wooden Walls. The first large ones were the hoTTea installations in the former Casino site, which people went crazy over. Hopefully, this will have a similar reaction. Bordalo II’s “work is very accessible. You don’t even know it’s plastic until you get close,” said Carrie Turner, APAC Executive Director. She said the installation will be approximately 17 feet by 15 feet. Wooden Walls has been the most important project in our city to keep As-bury Park in the forefront of arts and cultural, both locally and even nation-ally. The many murals it commissioned the past decade from all types of artists on the boardwalk are easily the most shared artistic images in Asbury Park on social media. That’s important for our city’s arts reputation.

And Wooden Walls, hopefully, will set up something even larger for the future.

“The end game is an arts district on the boardwalk,” Hampton said.

That would be achieved by getting all types of artists, especially internationally acclaimed artists, to come to Asbury Park, create their installation and go back to where they’re from to tell everyone about our city. The bigger the artistic buzz for Asbury Park, the more possible it will be for boardwalk re-developer Madison Marquette to create a successful and vibrant boardwalk arts district, as it hopes to do. That could be big. And Wooden Walls is setting the stage.

Back to the Bordalo II installation on the Asbury boardwalk this fall. Since 2012, the artist has created over two hundred animal sculptures using more than 100 tons of reused materials. His works are chiefly found throughout Europe, but they also can be seen in Singapore, French Polynesia, Quebec and Mexico City. The Asbury Park installation will feature a mother fox and a baby fox.

Bordalo II has fewer than 20 pieces in the United States, and none in the tri-state area. His closest other work is over 200 miles away in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
“Appearing on the Asbury Park Boardwalk will ensure that the artwork can be enjoyed by residents and the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the boardwalk each year, providing inspiration and provoking conversation, all while helping continue the uniqueness of this creative Jersey Shore destination,” ac-cording to a statement from the Wooden Walls Project and APAC.

Bordalo II’s projects necessitate community involvement in that the host location must collect the used plastic to be utilized in the upcycled installations prior to his team’s arrival to the project site. There are several groups that host beach clean ups or otherwise focus on sustainability issues in Asbury Park that are being targeted to support the project in these collection efforts. The project is likewise an opportunity to coordinate with city youth organizations to include them on a high-profile, large-scale, educational art project.

“The Bordalo II-Asbury Park project will use art to engage the community, drive tourism, and bring attention to contemporary global issues like consumption and waste, clean oceans, endangered and threatened species, and sustainability,” according to the Wooden Walls Project and APAC statement on the installation.

The Wooden Walls Project and the Asbury Park Arts Council are currently accepting in-kind or other financial donations to support the project, as well as seeking donations of the used plastic items identified by the artist to create Asbury Park’s unique installation. To discuss opportunities to get involved, con-tact Jenn Hampton, Founder, Wooden Walls Public Art Project at juicyjenn@par-lor-gallery.com.