About Bruce
Bruce Willen is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, musician, educator, and the principal of Public Mechanics — a studio focusing on works for public and cultural spaces. Throughout his practice he seeks to bring new perspectives to everyday places, objects, language, and histories. Bruce’s recent work aims to deepen engagement with the landscapes, systems, and symbols around us, fostering moments of discovery and play that open new ways to… more
Ghost Rivers
A multi-site public art installation rediscovering buried streams and lost histories flowing below the streets of Baltimore.
Ghost Rivers is a 1.5-mile-long permanent public art installation and walking tour that reveals the lost path and history of the buried stream Sumwalt Run, which now flows through underground culverts beneath the Remington and Charles Village neighborhoods. Through a series of permanent installations, wayfinding markers, and writings Ghost Rivers brings hidden landscapes and histories to the surface. Along the way the project draws connections between Baltimore’s watershed, its social history, and the evolving relationships between natural and human environments.
Mapmaking at city-scale
Ghost Rivers installations add a cartographic overlay to the physical environment, a meandering blue line that traces the lost path of Sumwalt Run across city streets and sidewalks. The pale blue color references the hues of waterways found on vintage maps and unites the Ghost Rivers installations across multiple sites. The form and color stands out among other roadway markings and a visually-crowded streetscape to help visitors follow the project through the neighborhood.
Multiple narrative threads
Visitors may first stumble upon only one or two Ghost Rivers installations, and each site’s accompanying narrative is written as a standalone vignette. As viewers visit multiple sites, these narratives link together to illuminate larger themes within our social and natural landscapes. Sculptural interpretive signs feature cut-out river shapes that help visitors “see” the lost creek and a QR code that links viewers to additional digital content, including photos, historic imagery, and action-oriented resources for each site and topic. A project map on the signage, along with an interactive Google Map, help visitors to navigate a self-guided tour of Ghost Rivers installation sites.
An engaging multimedia website and interactive map serve as digital guides for visitors who wish to tour the sites on their own and for people around the world to experience Ghost Rivers virtually.
An extensive community engagement process
During project development, engagement included community history workshops, public presentations, canvassing, in-person conversations, a collaborative chalk art drawing event, and one-on-one interviews that added voices of longtime neighborhood residents to the project. This broad engagement resulted in strong neighborhood support for Ghost Rivers.
Concept, design, research, writing: Bruce Willen
Fabrication & installation: Elemental Metalworks, Equus Striping, Public Mechanics, Preform, Powder Coat Finishes, Floyd Godsey II
Community & municipal partners: Greater Remington Improvement Association (GRIA), Blue Water Baltimore, Friends of Wyman Park Dell, Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), Baltimore City Department of Transportation, Baltimore City Department of Public Works, Baltimore City Office of Sustainability
Funding & in-kind support: Maryland State Arts Council, Gutierrez Memorial Fund, Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Chesapeake Bay Trust, Baltimore City Department of Public Works, Spiniello (in-kind)
Website development: Public Mechanics & Oleksandr Khudonohov
Additional research assistance: Micah Connor, Kathleen C. Ambrose, Ronald Parks
The Chairs
Library of Lost Gloves & Lost Loves
The Necessity of Tomorrow(s)
Can art and design carry a conversation beyond the walls of a lecture hall? Can it create richer context for the event itself? Can it spark new dialog and debate?
These were some of the questions discussed with the Baltimore Museum of Art for The Necessity of Tomorrow(s), a high-profile BMA lecture series on art, race, and social justice, featuring prominent black artists like Mark Bradford, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Mickalene Thomas.
To help bring themes from the lecture series into public spaces around Baltimore, I led the creation of a series of detournéments — public art interventions that interrupt vernacular advertising and signage with hopeful expressions of “Tomorrow…” By injecting these little surreal moments into the public realm, we aimed to spark further questions and conversations related to The Necessity of Tomorrow(s).
Project team: Bruce Willen, Nolen Strals, Kacie Moon, Christian Mortlock, Seth Labenz, Roy Rub
Collaborators: BMA, Gamynne Guillotte, Kevin Zweerink, Gilah Press, Sage Screenprinting, Alpha Graphics, Dave Zimmerman
Ghost Stoops
Auto Repair (installation proposals for restored human landscapes)
Broken Windows
Public Park
An art action to activate a vacant lot and interrogate the practice of land banking
Public Park temporarily reclaimed a large fenced-off lot in the heart of Charles Village as a public space. This guerilla art and placemaking action activated this long-vacant land for the first time in many years, while calling attention to the practice of institutional land banking.
In cities like Baltimore, where real estate is relatively affordable, it’s common practice for investors to “land bank,” buying vacant property and holding onto it for years or decades, allowing the buildings and lots to fall into disrepair while preventing improvements or productive use. At large scale, land banking obstructs community revitalization efforts. Institutions and municipal agencies are often just as culpable as out-of-town slumlords.
2011
Art action, hand-painted sign
Location: Baltimore, MD
Collaborators: Nolen Strals
Codependent Chair
OSAYCANYOUSEE
