Mary Mattingly

Swale-Concrete-Plant-Park-Marry-Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans large-scale public sculpture and collage-based photography, imagining adaptive futures shaped by ecological interdependence. Best known for sculptural ecosystems that inhabit civic space—from floating food forests to tidal water clocks—her work brings attention to water, food, and shelter. In parallel, her photographic collages offer intimate, symbolic reflections on these same questions, transforming documentation into speculative diagrams and visual poems. Together, these practices are a layered inquiry into resilience, displacement, and the human and ecological systems we live within.

Learn More about my work at www.marymattingly.com and www.swalenyc.org

Ebb-of-a-Spring-Tide-Mattingly

Ebb of a Spring Tide

Sculpture | 2023 | Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY

Ebb of a Spring Tide is a large-scale sculptural installation that confronts rising tides through personal memory, ecological entanglement, and the precarity of home. Commissioned by Socrates Sculpture Park, the project centers on a recurring dream in which Mattingly’s ground-floor apartment floods during extreme tidal events—transforming the domestic into the aquatic. The work materializes a dreamscape into the visual language of a deconstructed apartment building, its remnants suspended from an architectural scaffolding structure.

Constructed with reclaimed materials such as bins, ladders, IBC totes, doors, and construction netting, Ebb of a Spring Tide explores the fragility and resilience of both human and natural systems.

Project Details

  • Year: 2023
  • Location: Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY
  • Commissioned by: Socrates Sculpture Park
  • Materials: Reclaimed netting, colorful industrial filler, scaffolding, waterproof textile, steel
  • Dimensions: Approx. 25 ft x 40 ft x 20 ft