Triple Decker Ecology:

Somerville’s Urban Landscape

October 11, 2018 – December 9, 2018 | Curated by Pennie Taylor (Community Curator), with David Buckley Borden

The Somerville Museum’s first Community Curators explore land use history, current environmental issues, and future possibilities. “The Triple Decker Ecology” installation includes historic objects from the Somerville Museum collection, and new works that consider site-specific environmental issues, made by artist David Buckley Borden and collaborators. The artworks communicate issues, raise awareness, and spark direct action. Programming with local organizations, citizen scientists, and community artists let museum visitors see what work is going on right now in Somerville, and how they might join the cause. Works connect soil, water, air, trees, direct action, and data to historic imagery, flags, and infrastructure.

Collaborators included CC McGregor, Mike Demaggio, Jack Kohler Byers, Jackie Barry, Alyson Fletcher, Kate Sokol, Marc Davenport, Weather is Happening, and the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.

Related Programming

Opening Reception: Thursday 10/11/18 | 6–8pm

More Bats!: Saturday 10/20/18 | 10:30am–12pm

Children’s book reading with Somerville writer and 2018 Somerville Arts Council artist Jacob Kramer and Harvard bat biologist Jasmin Camacho. 

Somerville Climate Coalition Social: Tuesday 10/30/18 | 6:30–9pm

Local environmental organizers meet and greet.

Curator Tour with Pennie Taylor: Saturday 11/17/18 | 1pm

Evening hours and new projection by Somerville’s WSAC artist Mary Lewey & Avi Paul Weinstein: Saturday 12/1/18 | 6–8pm

About the Community Curator

Pennie Taylor, Community Curator

Pennie Taylor (b. 1984, Maine) is a curator, organizer, and game designer based in Somerville. She explores the natural world, collections, play and display, as does her game, Why the long face? In 2015 Taylor was a Somerville Arts Council Fellow, and artist-in-residence at Igor Metropol, Budapest. She developed digital resources, interactive installations, and programs at museums including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Rose Art Museum, and was adjunct faculty at Northeastern University’s College of Art, Media + Design. Taylor holds an MA in Cultural Production from Brandeis University.

David Buckley Borden, Artist

David Buckley Borden is a Cambridge-based interdisciplinary artist and designer. Using an accessible combination of art and design, David promotes a shared environmental awareness and heightened cultural value of ecology. David’s place-based projects highlight both pressing environmental issues and everyday phenomena. Informed by research and community outreach, David’s work manifests in a variety of forms, ranging from site-specific landscape installations in the woods to data-driven cartography in the gallery. David’s place-based projects have recently earned him residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. David was also a 2016/2017 Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard University where he answered the question, “How can art and design foster cultural cohesion around environmental issues and help inform ecology-minded decision making.” David studied landscape architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and worked at Sasaki Associates and Ground before focusing his independent practice at the intersection of landscape, creativity, and cultural event.