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
 

Playable art

This permanent installation at the Anacostia Public Library plaza reimagines common seating as a form of expression, stretching chairs and benches into surreal and whimsical shapes that activate a sense of play. Each of the eight sculptural seats encourages interaction and offers unique opportunities for play and social engagement.

2020
Painted steel, epoxy pavement coating
Location: Washington, DC (permanent installation)

Lead artist: Bruce Willen
Additional project team: Sarah Templin, Katryna Carter, Briony Hynson, Tim Scofield
Collaborators: the Neighborhood Design Center, Tim Scofield Studio, Graham Projects
Commissioning Agencies: D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, D.C. Office of Planning

Find a glove, leave a glove. Take a glove, leave a love.

This participatory public art installation at Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park collected orphaned mittens from the gutters and snow banks of nearby neighborhoods, annotated with 1-line love stories/poems. People are invited to “Find a glove, leave a glove. Take a glove, leave a love.”
 

2022
Found gloves, hang tags, signage
Location: Baltimore, MD

Collaborators: Sarah Templin, the people of Baltimore

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

Glowing portals mark the former sites of demolished rowhomes in Baltimore

Baltimore’s city grid is interrupted with thousands of empty lots that once contained rowhouses, homes to generations of residents, rich and poor alike, who once congregated on the vanished front stoops. Like missing teeth the sites of these demolished buildings are a palpable absence in the neighborhood fabric.

Ghost Stoops proposes to revivify and memorialize these missing homes and memories. Marble steps, framed by glowing outlines recall the houses that once stood at these sites.

2020
Steel, LED neon lighting, stone steps

Selected images from an ongoing photo series

2003–ongoing
Color photography

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

Found object sculpture

2019
Salvaged three-legged chair, rock
Dimensions: 18 x 21 x 32”

Prints and objects inspired by the War of 1812 bicentennial

OSAYCANYOUSEE was solo exhibition by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals, featuring prints and objects inspired by the War of 1812. Though lesser-known today, this first truly American war shaped our national identity and set the tone for the country’s westward expansion and the development of the American psyche over the next two centuries.

The artwork in the exhibition incorporates themes of capitalism, violence, and baseball with visual wit, dark humor, and a bold graphic aesthetic, drawing iconography from pop culture, patriotism, and American history. Each piece takes its title from lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner”—appropriately referencing the song penned two hundred years ago in the Baltimore harbor. The work ranges from austere, graphic images to intense, illustrative work inspired by pop psychedelia. Each piece is layered with innuendo and symbolism, inviting the viewer to look and read more closely.

 

2012
Selection of editions shown here includes:
Serigraph prints
Engraved baseball bat
Letterpress editions
Letterpress monoprint

Collaborator: Nolen Strals