One of my favorite things about New York is that you can find art anywhere. A few years back, I wrote about an awesome installation in Madison Square Park: Jim Campbell’s “Scattered Lights.” Although I try to make an effort to walk through this park every weekend, I haven’t given a ton of thought to the different art installations there recently. But yesterday, as I sat on a bench attempting to study for my Series 79, I got a little distracted by people walking up to three water towers in the grass behind me – it’s not hard to distract me.

The most recent installation of Madison Square Art is Brooklyn artist Iván Navarro’s “This Land is Your Land.” When you stand under each water tower and look up, you see a neon reflection that appears to go on forever into the sky. One water tower has the word “Me,” also reflected as “We.” The next has “Bed” which I couldn’t identify as that word right away and had to look at the sign for. The last has an endless ladder which is a nice reminder that the sky’s the limit.

“This Land is Your Land” is on display until April 13, 2014. Navarro’s inspiration for this installation was his experience with immigration growing up. I’m not going to pretend to understand how the water towers and the words play into that (especially “Bed”), but the illusions in the water towers are still worth checking out for a few minutes, especially if you’re walking through the park anyway.

xx