By
Noel Hefele
Piece description from the artist
If you haven't taken the time to walk the entire length of the High Line park in Chelsea, I suggest doing so. It's a fantastic accomplishment, creating a unique new public space for New Yorkers. There are many clever nooks and crannies, as well as considered and framed views of NYC architecture. I love how the designers utilize lines as a border between a patch of vegetation and the pathway. The park is indeed about lines.
I wonder sometimes what the people who worked along this rail line in the past would think if they knew what the space would become. Maybe one day in the future, some familiar roads or highways will be repurposed as public green space. Well, we can dream.
Noel Hefele is a talented landscape painter with a diverse background in the arts. Born and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, he received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002 and later earned a MA in Arts and Ecology from a school in England. Throughout his career, Noel has had the opportunity to exhibit his work internationally and has pieces in numerous private collections. He has also served on the board of the non-profit community arts organization PLGarts in Brooklyn, New York and co-teaches a graduate course at Brooklyn College called Human Tracks in the Urban Landscape. In 2013 and 2014, Noel was the Artist in Residence at the Barbuda Archeological Research center in the Caribbean.
Currently, Noel resides and works in the Bronx, New York where he is in the process of exploring Van Cortlandt Park and creating a new body of work. As an artist, Noel believes in the power of art to help us move towards a more responsible and holistic understanding of the environment. He sees the landscape as an entangled field of relationships that includes humans, animals, plants, minerals, and more, and believes that by viewing the non-human world as more than just objects, we can take responsibility for our impact on the planet and recognize that we are not the sole subjects of the Earth's narrative. Through his art, Noel aims to collaborate with the landscape in order to produce effects in himself and others, aesthetically and emotionally reconfiguring the way we see the world.
For more information and to see more of Noel's work, visit www.facebook.com/NoelHefeleStudios.
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