Mary Mattingly is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow whose work spans large-scale public sculpture, ecological installation, and collage-based photography.

Salt-tolerant edible plants at Ebb of a Spring Tide at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York
Ebb of a Spring Tide's Water Clock overlooking Manhattan
Vessels in the Water Clock keeping "tidal time"

Art is everything. It's love and it's longing, it slows time and asks people to dream.

Load video: Swale, a floating food forest by Mary Mattingly

Floating Garden is the next chapter of Swale, launching on the Erie Canal, June 6,2026.

Help support public art: a floating food forest for public foraging, hands-on learning, and climate resilience. Free and open to the public. Launching on the Erie Canal June 6, 2026.

Visit Floating Garden Fundraiser Prints support this initiative

In New York City, foraging from public land has been off-limits for over a century. Swale was a floating food forest built collectively in New York City. People could pick fresh food for free. Swale led to NYC's first 24-hour Foodway at Concrete Plant Park in the South Bronx, and was a proof-of-concept for a more permanent floating food forest with perennial fruits, vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants.

"Swale"

"While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow." ― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

Limnal Lacrimosa (of lakes, tears) was a water clock that encompassed a building in the valley of Glacier National Park. It utilized glacial loss to tell time for nine months until the clock ran dry. Water dripped from the building's top to bottom floors, filling vessels that would overflow and cycle back up to the top floor. In one room, people brought their own vessels that collected drips and contribute to the building's soundscape.

"Limnal Lacrimosa"

Last Light/First Light began on the West Coast of the United States. Serving as documentation of light and time, this series is the result of repeating an action each year. I create a double exposure on the shortest day of the year.
"Last Light/First Light" series

metal prints, time, salt art, accumulation, durational art, wall art, contemporary art, modern art, met art, artsy, wall art prints, performance art, wall decor, art cafe, robert smithson, minimalist art, art house, framed prints, giclee prints, geometric art, art shop,

Photography and Dreams

"...The tides, when the Moon swung closer, rose so high nobody could hold them back. There were nights when the Moon was full and very, very low, and the tide was so high that the Moon missed a ducking in the sea by a hair's breadth; well, let's say a few yards anyway. Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did..."
― Italo Calvino, The Distance of the Moon

In 2022, I began making Salt Forms, sculptures that developed like photographs and read like tidal maps. I soaked steel in ocean water from New York's harbor and water collected in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I would then photograph them at different stages in their transformation.

Desire Lines, from the Pipelines and Permafrost series
Rematriation, from the Pipelines and Permafrost series
Retreat and Advance, from the Pipelines and Permafrost series

"Pipelines and Permafrost"

Bundles

In a personal project I began in 2013, I bundled belongings into sculptural forms to highlight my own consumption in a more iconic form. I utilized the bundles for absurd performances about personal consumption. At a certain point, I had bundled most of my possessions.

"Bundles" | Soft Sculptures

still life, abstract art, abstract still life photograph, wall art, contemporary art, modern art, met art, artsy, wall art prints, performance art, wall decor, art cafe, robert smithson, minimalist art, art house, framed prints, giclee prints, geometric art, art shop,

For now there is still poetry

"Among the pieces, trembling softly but perceptibly, like a sleeping bird, there throbbed, mysteriously, a compass." ― Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Photographs can depict both the intimate and the infinite. They inspire wonder and possibilities and reveal new questions.

"Poetry" series

Selected Exhibitions

Brooklyn Museum • Storm King Art Center • Palais de Tokyo • Barbican • BRIC Arts Media • Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes da la Habana • Smart Museum of Art • International Center of Photography • Cuenca Biennial

Recent Photographic Work

Mailing list:

Mary is represented by Robert Mann Gallery in New York City.

For inquiries, exhibitions, or commissions, please email daniel @ robertmann.com

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Salt-tolerant edible plants at Ebb of a Spring Tide at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York

Ebb of a Spring Tide's Water Clock overlooking Manhattan

Vessels in the Water Clock keeping "tidal time"