Ned Smyth
	See Also Destination Wave Wall in Green Completion Date: 1996 Medium: Chain-link fencing and landscaping materials Dimensions: 10'-25'(H), nearly 1 mile in length Location: Coney Island Water Pollution Control Plant Address: Knapp Street, Brooklyn Architect: Pirnie-Baker Sponsor Agency: n/a Design Agency: Department of Environmental Protection

Wave Wall in Green is an arts project which functions on three levels. First, it is a sculpture that is a symbol of the relationship between water, life, and the life of our planet. Directly influenced by the function of this site, I felt very strongly that the content of this environmental work should relate to the important role that this plant performs: the cleaning and protection of our water and environment.

Second, this art piece forms the perimeter of the Coney Island Water Treatment Plant. As the perimeter of the plant, Wave Wall in Green, serves the important function of security. It is made up of gates and fences ranging from 10 to 25 feet in height, which control access to the building as well as keep the building free from graffiti.

Third, Wave Wall in Green was designed to soften and landscape this industrial complex situated in a residential area. The problems of a large sewage treatment plant in a residential area are obvious. This design uses lower cost, industrial chain link fence, but at the same time, disguises it through form and planting. The fence, where visible, always takes on the narrative image of water. Otherwise, plants obscure the fence as natural landscaping, islands or vine covered water forms. The idea is that if the observer drives, walks, or lives in front of the sewage treatment plant, he will see green: growing trees, bushes, grasses, flowers, and vines.

Wave Wall in Green is made in two sections. On the west side of Knapp Street, the imagery represents waves, water, and islands; on the east side, land, shoreline or coast. The wave along Knapp Street undulates from a three dimensional curl to a two dimensional wall and back to three dimensions. Behind Knapp Street, on Voorhies Avenue and Avenue Y, the fence is two dimensional with a curving top alluding to the water's surface.

Particular attention has been paid to the back of the complex on Voorhies Avenue and Avenue Y by planting sweet smelling and flowering shrubs and trees. On residential Avenue Y especially, beds of flowering bushes and trees have been used to screen and naturalize this side of the site. All plants have been chosen and placed to insure no maintenance. The purpose is to achieve as natural a setting as possible. No pruning or tending is planned, but rather, a natural romantic quality insured by choosing hardy specimens and designing all dimensions to accommodate mature plants.

From the trellis-like cantilevered wave, to grassy shoreline, to islands and sea, Wave Wall in Green is a living environment and picture - a growing green mantel wrapped around the Coney Island Water Pollution Control Plant. It protects and gives meaning to the complex, while serving as a buffer between this invaluable industrial mechanism and the surrounding population. -- Smyth, 1989

About the Artist...
Ned Smyth, who graduated in 1970 with a B.A. and high honors in art from Kenyon College in Ohio, is no stranger to public art. He has received numerous commissions both in and outside New York, such as Brooklyn Bridge, for Creative Time in 1983; Landfall, for the Christiana Gateway Park and Amtrak Station in Wilmington, Delaware in 1988; and Gaia for the Dublin (California) Town Hall in 1990. Since 1973, he has been exhibiting his work in the United States and Europe, in both solo and group exhibitions, the most recent being at the Jan Thurn Gallery in New York (1997) and at the By the Sea Gallery in Sag Harbor, New York (1996). In addition to his 1989 New York City Art Commission Award for Design Excellence for Wave Wall in Green , he received a C. A. P. S. Grant in 1975 -1976, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a grant from the America the Beautiful Foundation in 1978, and the 1985 Industry Honor Award from the National Terazzo and Mosaic Association.