NEW YORK, NY.- The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world and located in Morningside Heights, announces the commission of UNSEEN, a new site-specific art installation from New York- and Catskills-based glass artist Nisha Bansil, opening to the public on June 30. UNSEEN aims to raise awareness, inspire action, and honor the unhoused individuals in NYC. The installation comprises an enormous pile of glass ginkgo leaves that will cascade down stone steps inside the Cathedral’s nave, mirroring both the forest floor and the urban sidewalk. Created at the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) Studio Casting Center in Corning, NY, more than 50,000 cast-glass leaves will form a mound that grows during the installation’s run.

Artist Nisha Bansil said: “After living in the woods and then moving to New York City, I was struck by how, in the forest, the individual leaves are not discernible and instead become a collective background. In my neighborhood, it is the people who disappear. The individuals who make up this collective get lost, blending into the environment. Those who are unhoused are walked past and ignored. With UNSEEN, I want to translate the magnitude of the New York City housing crisis into a tangible, somatic experience, using ginkgo leaves to honor those who exist in a parallel landscape hidden in plain sight. I hope to bridge that gap in perception and turn what is often invisible into something impossible to ignore.”

Bansil was initially inspired by the twin statistics that more than 50,000 people are living in shelters and on the streets of New York City and that the average mature ginkgo tree—a common sight on the streets of New York—sheds more than 50,000 leaves every fall. By creating ginkgo leaves in cast glass, this work aims to serve as a physical translation of the overwhelming number of unhoused people in the city. In this framework, the individual is part of a continuous, shifting phenomenon, creating a space for connection between the observer and the pile.

“This project honors our enduring mission to utilize this sacred space as a catalyst for social justice and transformative education,” said Laura F. Bosley, Executive Director of Cathedral Programming. “Within our soaring nave, these thousands of glass leaves serve as a fragile threshold, demanding the deliberate proximity of the viewer to illuminate the stories of those our society too often leaves in the shadows.”

Creating UNSEEN

To create the staggering number of individual cast-glass leaves required for the installation, Bansil worked with the team at the James Flaws & Marcia Weber Casting Center in The Studio at CMoG, a leading international center for the creation of large-scale cast works. Bansil’s method began with 40 leaves that the artist collected on the grounds of the Cathedral. Working within 60 x 90-inch large-scale kilns, Bansil filled each kiln with talc and used molds made from the collected leaves to leave detailed impressions. These impressions were then filled with powdered glass and fired. Through a process of time and temperature control within the kilns, the resulting leaves range from totally opaque to transparent. Bansil’s team worked for 14 weeks at the Casting Center, producing between 600 and 850 leaves per day and approximately 11,000–13,000 leaves per month to arrive at the requisite 50,000 for the installation.

Richard Whiteley, Senior Programs Manager at The Studio said: “As we celebrate The Studio’s 30th anniversary in 2026, supporting projects like UNSEEN exemplifies our mission to create a vibrant artistic and educational community and underscores our great responsibility and opportunity as the only facility in North America equipped to realize a project of this scale. We are honored to provide an environment where technical innovation and social advocacy meet, allowing artists like Nisha to push the boundaries of cast glass to tell vital, human stories.”