The Jersey City Independent "

Photos: Christine Decruz

People — including myself — often say that many different items, objects or ideas are ubiquitous. It’s a word that’s probably a bit overused by writerly folk, but I can say with confidence that it applies to the subject matter of Jersey City artist Pollie Barden’s latest project: water.

Water is everywhere, it’s essential for survival of both humans and other species, yet it is increasingly hard to come by in some parts of the world. “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” a World Bank vice president famously predicted in 1995. Meanwhile, the bottled water industry has turned a public resource into a private, commercial commodity — and made a fortune doing it.

“I used to be someone who scoffed at people who bought bottled water instead of drinking tap water,” Barden says. “However by 2008, I had become a complete convert to the status of bottled water.”

Her transformation began in 2000, when she was living in Greenville, N.C. A massive hurricane (Floyd) hit, and flooded the city, forcing residents to boil tap water for months when using it to cook with or drink.

“My roommate and I signed up for a water delivery service so we would have water to drink,” Barden explains. “We kept the service long after the tap water returned to be safe to drink.”

In 2005, she made the move up north, and as part of her transition from a car culture to a pedestrian culture, Barden says it “seemed natural” to pick up bottles of water as she needed them from bodegas and local stores. “What I was not considering was that every time I was buying a bottled water, I was paying 10,000 times the price of tap water.”

This was all on her mind when Barden was selected in 2008 to participate in the arts collective _gaia’s Wonder Women residency. The theme was “World War III,” and that World Bank quote was stuck in her head. “My proposal was on exploring the politics and economics of bottled water, by investigating how I went from a tap water drinker to a worshiper of the gleaming plastic bottle,” she says.

That installation, known as Bottled V.1, went up at Mana Fine Arts, and led to Barden’s latest project, Bottled V.2, in which the 36-year-old artist teamed up with the Jersey City Museum and more than 1,000 local students to explore the same theme.

The results were unveiled last week at the museum’s window display at the Mack-Cali building on Christopher Columbus Drive (near Exchange Place). The installation is made up of more than 2,000 discarded water bottles collected by the students over the past five months, in addition to supplemental materials like plywood, book board, Plexiglas and a little paint. The bottles come from school waste receptacles, the Hackensack and Hudson Riverfronts, city streets and neighborhood parks.

Barden says the students will continue collecting bottles, and the Bottled V.2 sculpture will change based on student input and ideas until it comes down in June.

“The goal of this sculpture is to have the students experience the full cycle of creative process and get in touch with the artists that they are,” she says. “Have a concept, try it out. If it fails, try another way until they execute their vision. Even better if the vision changes.”

But the students haven’t only been thinking about the artistic process; the subject matter has forced some to think about the environment, consumerism and global politics.

“They had thoughtful questions,” Barden says. “The best one I got was do I still buy bottled water.” She admits that “occasionally” she purchases water if there’s nowhere to get a cup of tap water, or her personal bottle is empty or not with her. “But the difference is that it is not a thoughtless act anymore.”

As for what’s next in the Bottled series, Barden says there are two grants “in the works” to create a Bottled V.3, which would continue to expand on V.2 and the students’ work. “The hope is to be able to have Bottled V.3 travel to an outside location, where casual visitors are invited to add their water bottles to the sculpture,” she says. “I will continue to work with schools, and community groups to have workshops around creating art out of water bottles and awareness of options for disposable items.”

That awareness is the foundation that informs the entire Bottled series.

“Having grown up in an industrialized country, it is easy to take it for granted that most of our population can turn on tap for clean drinking water,” Barden says. “Bottled water represents the disconnect between how I see myself and how my actions contradict that perception. I have always labeled myself as an environmental activist. Yet every time I purchase a bottle of water, I am using my strongest voting tool — my money — to say, ‘Yes, I support this industry that is not healthy for our natural resources.’”

While the resurgent green consumer movement has led to some changes in the way bottled water is marketed (Poland Springs’ claim to be using less plastic in its bottles comes to mind), there is still a disconnect that bothers Barden.

“Bottled water marketing often invokes the images of nature, but the process for creating a plastic container is far removed from being natural,” she says. “This is underlined by the fact that bottles for water are made only to be used once. It is a product that promotes a throwaway culture.”

Bottled V.2 is currently on display at the Mack-Cali Building windows on Christopher Columbus Drive, between Washington and Greene Streets. The initially scheduled Jersey City Museum “opening” event for the sculpture last week was canceled due to weather, and has been rescheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 10 am. For more on the Bottled project, visit the website or follow the project on Twitter.

Part of the JCM @ series, Bottled V.2. is an extension of Hudson Views, a 2009 exhibition at Jersey City Museum organized by William La Rosa of the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs/Tourism. This project was also made possible by the generous support of Hudson County Freecycle, ScrapCycle and the Recycling Program of NYU.

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