Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is a New York–based artist whose work co-builds public living systems geared toward collective stewardship. These sculptures combine art, policy, and basic needs. Her collaborative project Swale (2016–2019) is a barge-based public food forest that welcomed visitors and helped catalyze NYC's first public Foodway for legal public foraging at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx. Floating Garden extends this work as an 80' × 30' mobile edible landscape for free foraging and wellness developed with community partners in the South Bronx and in Western New York on the Erie Canal. Recent works such as Ebb of a Spring Tide trace water, salt, memory, and resilience across shorelines. Mattingly partners with ecologists, students, engineers, and institutions to test regenerative materials and to reimagine urban infrastructure toward climate adaptation. She writes on art, ecology, and coalition. With Suzanne Watters, Mattingly is co-editing the forthcoming book: Art and Ecological Impact: An Artist's Guide to Environmental Practice, Yale University Press, 2027.