Queens Artist’s Vision Unite With Mayor’s Green Policy
By JULIET WERNER

Last Thursday, Long Island City artist Andrea Polli sent an email to Queens Council on the Arts Director Managing Director Lynn Lobell. She was sure to cc Executive Director Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer.

Polli had heard Mayor Mike Bloomberg's call to increase the City's reliance on wind power. Bloomberg's idea to mount windmills on bridges, which he presented at the 2008 National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, was a good one and one that she had proposed four years ago. She thought QCA would be sure to appreciate the fact that the vision was first hers.

Andrea Polli

Polli, who teaches in the Film and New Media Department at Hunter College, received a $2,000 grant from the Queens Council on the Arts in 2004 for a series of drawings and a video, collectively called the Queensbridge Wind Power Project.

"The Queensbridge Wind Power Project presents a vision of a future when meeting energy needs can enhance the beauty of a city by investigating how clean, renewable wind power could be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge," Polli wrote on her project's official Web site.

The Mayor's green energy plan currently includes installing windmills on bridges and skyscrapers, turbines on the rivers' shores and solar panels on several other buildings throughout the City.

"Today, we're taking a step that will really kick alternative energy production into high gear in the Big Apple," Bloomberg said at the summit. "We want their best ideas for creating both small - and large-scale projects serving New Yorkers. Such projects might, for example, be designed to draw power from the tides of the Hudson and East Rivers…They might call for dramatically increasing rooftop solar power production, which we've estimated could meet nearly 20 percent of the City's need for electricity. They could tap into geothermal energy. In fact, some private home and building owners have already drilled their own 'heat wells.' Or perhaps companies will want to put windfarms atop our bridges and skyscrapers, or use the enormous potential of powerful off-shore winds miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, where turbines could generate roughly twice the energy that land-based windfarms can."

Polli suggested placing windmills on the Queensboro Bridge in 2004.

Polli said she frequently looks out at the bridge from the comfort of her Long Island City apartment. The events of Sept. 11 combined with the blackout of 2003 provided further inspiration.

"I was inspired by the design it had," Polli said. "It had these amazing spires and those were removed in 70s. So the idea of the project is to return those spires. It can be problematic to slap some turbines on the bridge. You really have to think about how it's integrated with the architecture and history."

Lobell said the judging panel, comprised of curators and fellow artists, was impressed by Polli's vision.

"It was very innovative and kind of cutting edge at the moment," Lobell said, adding that other QCA grantees have received funding to make artwork out of recyclable materials.

When Lobell heard of the mayor's proposal, she immediately thought of Polli's earlier work. The QCA's Queens Community Arts Fund directs city, state, federal, and private funds to individual artists and organizations that have been in operation for at least a year.

Polli has toured the country presenting her video and drawings. Phase two of the project consists of putting a weather station on top of one of the Queensboro Bridge towers and using the transmitted data to create artistic pieces.

For information about the artist, visit www.andreapolli.com.