http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/artic...ver/12155.html
Art will gush over East River
by amy zimmer
APR 3, 2008
LOWER EAST SIDE. The stretch of the East River path near Rutgers Street is where men from Chinatown come with their fishing rods or the homeless find benches to sleep. But
yesterday, a gaggle of media convened at Pier 35 to get a glimpse of what is expected to become a hot tourist spot.
Workers were erecting a 110-foot high steel scaffolding for one of Olafur Eliasson’s “Waterfalls,” which is expected to start pumping river water (using green energy) in July, running through October.
A 90-foot-tall waterfall will cascade under the Brooklyn Bridge and there will be 120-foot falls at Governors Island and between Brooklyn’s piers 4 and 5. The Dutch-Icelandic artist “always knew he wanted to do something with water,” said Rochelle Steiner, director of New York’s Public Art Fund, which commissioned the $15 million, privately-funded project two years ago.
Steiner’s group has worked with 500 artists over the last 30 years, but this is its most “ambitious” project, requiring complicated permitting and meetings with nearly a dozen government agencies and environmental groups.
Eliasson initially envisioned 25 sites from the Battery to the Harlem River. NYPD concerns about homeland security and Coast Guard considerations about boat traffic limited the scope. Plus, they needed city-owned sites that didn’t interfere with neighbors.