In June 2020 amid public outcry for racial justice, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s statue of Columbus was removed from Columbus Square in Providence RI. In 2024 I was one of three artists commissioned through the Mellon Foundation and the Providence Commemoration Lab to re-imagine the monument site. Today the site is still named Columbus Square, but the place is Mashapaug. Mashapaug Pond, the place of still water, is the largest freshwater body in what is now known as Providence. The square is less than a thousand feet from its banks, which are 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 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.
Today the park is a triangular median wedged between six lanes of traffic, primarily used as a bus stop. My installation is a small antidote to recent public design practices specifically hostile to pedestrians and the unhoused community.
I created a collection of sculptural furniture objects providing a circular forum for rest or gathering under the small grove of Sycamore trees. The objects were carved from the remains of an ancient local elm tree that died on nearby Sackett St. The furniture is receptive and supportive to the human body, accommodating physical needs and shared interactions. Recesses have been incorporated into the objects to hold plantings reflecting flora from the pond’s edges.
I collaborated with the Lorén Spears, Holly Ewald, the Tomaquag Museum, and Stillwater River Publications to support a 2nd edition of Through Our Eyes: An Indigenous View of Mashapaug Pond. The book provides indigenous history of the area through stories, interviews, poetry and artworks. Click image below to purchase.
Pond Lands commemorates the land and the interspecies relational networks that have flourished in the waterways surrounding Mashapaug pond for millennia.
Pond Lands photo credit: Rachel Maeve
Land & Story event photo credit: Dominique Sindayiganza
Learn more:
https://www.emptypedestal.space/about.html
https://www.are.na/lu-heintz/columbus-square
Pond Lands
Artist, Designer, Fabricator: Lu Heintz
Project Consultant: Keith Yeaw
Lead Chainsaw Operator: John Morra
Assistants: Jon Dinetz and An Talatinian