Top
As we recognize the necessity of creating more sustainable and humane cities, Jackie Brookner’s most recent work, Urban Rain, points the way. How do urban dwellers learn to not just see what they have chosen to ignore and consigned to waste, but to actually celebrate and utilize it? Commissioned by the City of San Jose, California to work at Roosevelt Community Center, a new LEED gold building, Brookner created two installations that collect and filter rainwater shed from the roof of the building. Beyond their elegant functionality, these works provoke questions about where the body begins and ends, about the human dependence on natural systems, and about what it can mean to be human today. Urban Rain documents Brookner’s process from concept drawings through installation and includes provocative essays by noted art critic Patricia Phillips and hydrologist Franco Montalto.
