Taking Back The City Dept: Public Fountains

In many European cities, public fountains are important gathering places. In North America, we have private waterparks and our city's public spaces lack such gracious amenities.

Last year Brooklyn artist Charles Goldman built Public Fountain: "a self-contained, portable and solar powered fountain. It is designed to bring the gathering point -- that the traditional urban fountain often is -- into the city's more tangential zones." He then pushed it fifteen miles across town and like all fountains, people gathered. “Just turn that thing on and it's a magnet for people,” says Goldman.

::Charles Goldman via ::Pruned

From a local TV station at the time:

f art is about life, and life is journey, well, Brooklyn artist Charles Goldman just might have it all figured out.

“This piece is called ‘Public Fountain,’ and that's what it is,” he says.

Goldman made the solar powered mobile fountain for an exhibit in the Bronx, and then decided to transport it there by foot.

“It's pretty tiring, but I'm confident I'll make it,” he says.

And so Goldman and a revolving group of friends begin a two-day walk from his Carroll Gardens studio to the Wave Hill Cultural Center in Riverdale. With camera in hand, NY1 followed along on the 15-mile journey.::NY1