QUEENS, NY.- The Queens Museum, in partnership with ArtBuilt and NYC Parks, launched Studio in the Park: The Queens Museum-ArtBuilt Mobile Studio Residency Program. Operating in conjunction with the Museum’s artist services and community engagement initiatives, the pair of month-long residencies provides visual artists the chance to work in a 150 square foot purpose-built mobile studio situated adjacent to the Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and near a gateway park entrance with maximum public accessibility. Artists Patrick Rowe and Matthew Jensen have been selected through an open call to participate in this uniquely embedded residency.

The first residency, running from June 15 through July 15, was awarded to the People’s Design Laboratory, a project by artist Patrick Rowe in collaboration with members of Mobile Print Power. The project functions as a research center for the development of unique navigational signage, a pressing challenge for Flushing Meadows Corona Park, using collaborative and participatory design strategies. The signage concepts developed at the People’s Design Laboratory captures the spirit of the park and are created by the park community through a series of participatory events and open studio hours. The signs highlights the unique vernacular aesthetics that thrive in a place as culturally diverse as Queens.

The concept for the project is based on a methodology for collaborative artmaking and design in public space that Rowe developed through Mobile Print Power, a multigenerational printmaking collective project that he initiated in 2013, and Rowe is assisted by World’s Park community advisors, a group of local park advocates that coalesced through an ongoing partnership between the Queens Museum, NYC Parks, and Design Trust for Public Space.

The second residency, from July 16 through August 16, has been awarded to A Collection of Walks, a project by Matthew Jensen. The project incubates a new body of work that brings Jensen’s process of walking, collecting, and documenting to explore the landscapes and neighborhoods in and around Flushing Meadows Corona Park. New York City parks have been a source of inspiration for Jensen over the past ten years. Here in Queens, Jensen’s walks through Flushing Meadows Corona Park yields a collection of objects, ephemera and natural detritus that will be carefully arranged inside the mobile studio as a cabinet of curiosities, where park-goers are invited to experience the varied collections culled from local landscapes. In the weeks following the residency Jensen will create a map or “walker’s guide” that the public can use as inspiration and guidance for reexamining their neighborhood and seeing the familiar in a new light.

The Artist
Artist Matthew Jensen uses walking, history, photography and collecting to create work about public landscapes and about how technology has expanded the meaning of accessible landscape. New York City’s landscapes have been a particular focus for Jensen with multidisciplinary projects like Nowhere in Manhattan, Cleaning a Glacial Pothole, East Coast-West Coast-The Bronx-The Bronx, Searching for Something Previously Unknown or Forgotten on Governors Island, Walking Flatbush and numerous others.