On Thursday, Nancy Nowacek and I caught a ride to Governors Island with Rob Buchanan.
Rob has shaped much of the city’s public boating culture; he helped start three community boathouses and is an influential member of the NYC Water Trail Association and the Citizens Water Quality Testing Program.
He had a few things he wanted to check out on our way to Governors Island, like progress on a new kayak launch in Bushwick Inlet Park that will open to the public this year.
We also checked the cages off the Billion Oyster docks.
It seemed like some of the cages were doing well; this is a living oyster.
But some did not look great, filled with empty shells.
Rob showed us where a development is planned for 900 units of luxury condominiums.
Save Bushwick Inlet is a community organization pushing back against the project. They revealed it to be a violation of the rezoning agreement that designated this city-owned land as a “transition zone” meant to connect the neighborhood to the water, not a wall of high-rise towers.
It took seeing this place in person and hearing the backstory from Rob to understand how bad this development would be, how it would turn hard-won public space into the skinny front yard of a massive private luxury development.
“An amenity,” said Rob.
Our next stop was to check on the dock over at the Navy Yard that Rob installed for one of the Village Community Boathouse rowboats.
It was looking pretty good, but we reconnected a missing line.
Then we flew to Governors Island.
“How fast are we going?” I asked, thinking it was 100 mph.
“19 miles per hour,” shouted Rob.
We performed our official mission: to inspect a rowing gig that Rob built with students at the Harbor School.
We still had time for one more stop before our opening.
Over drinks, Nancy and Rob talked about the development at Bush Terminal Park, where there might be an opportunity to keep boats close to the water for public use. They talked about the EDC, the DEC, and the DEP, while I sipped our pitcher of margaritas.
The amount of knowledge that Rob and Nancy share about city organizations and the public waterfront is amazing.
Nancy’s piece in the Works on Water Triennial reminded me how she came to know so much.
From 2012 to 2016, Nancy worked on The Bridge, a public advocacy project and artwork about reclaiming New York City waterways for public use. (This image is by Nancy, from her 2016 iteration of The Bridge.)
While working on The Bridge, Nancy made a myriad of other things: a play, sculptural installations, and this piece, Hydrostatic Lift, composed of every email generated by The Bridge project.
This new sculpture in the Triennial also seems to be about it, or about the interaction of these things—climate change plus all the EDCs and DEPs—how they are nets, each knot dependent and tugging on the next.
We spent some time in one of the cornerstones of the Triennial, Sarah Cameron Sunde’s video installation 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea.
Sarah has performed this piece around the world. Participants stand in one place for a full tidal cycle, submerged and revealed by the sea; their bodies become the measure of rising water’s slow insistence.
The Works on Water 2025 Triennial, curated by Emily Blumenfeld and Kendal Henry, is the latest endeavor by the WoW crew (Nancy and Sarah included) to gather artists working on, in, and with the water.
Here we are with Elizabeth Velasquez, another great artist in the show (her installation is behind us).
The Triennial is up at the Arts Center on Governors Island through October. Come see the show—it is amazing!
Thank you, Rob, Nancy, and Works on Water for netting me into this amazing group.
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