Abstract
Situated in Columbus Square, Providence, RI, Lu Heintz’s Pond Lands commemorates the land and the interspecies relational networks that flourished in the waterways surrounding Mashapaug Pond. The installation visually reconnects the park to its adjacent lands now separated by roadways and train tracks. The park is less than a thousand feet from the banks of Mashapaug Pond, the largest freshwater body in Providence and part of the Pawtuxet River Watershed leading into the Narragansett bay. The Narragansett people lived among these lands for thousands of years prior to European conquest and some indigenous families have remained into modern times. Mashapaug Pond is the one pond surviving from what was previously an ecosystem of several ponds, known as the pond lands.
The installation provides seats for resting and a forum for gathering through abstract furniture carved from the remains of an ancient local elm tree. The carvings follow the tree’s contours and illuminate the natural grain patterns. With similar intention, the furniture is receptive and supportive to the human body, designed to accommodate embodied needs and interactions. Recesses incorporated into the designs generate plantlife reflecting flora from the pond’s edges. The overall effect echoes a forest understory and its cycles of regrowth and recovery. The project intends to reconnect the site to its place, and through the land provide a sense of belonging.
Funded by the Mellon Foundation and the American Rescue Plan, The Providence Commemoration Lab was a program co-administered by The Department of Art, Culture and Tourism (ACT) and the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS). The Lab staged new site-specific projects on public property inviting unexpected ways of understanding commemoration as a communal process of historical redress and spatial reclamation.