Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans large-scale public sculpture and collage-based photography, imagining adaptive futures shaped by ecological interdependence. Best known for sculptural ecosystems that inhabit civic space—from floating food forests to tidal water clocks—her work brings attention to water, food, and shelter. In parallel, her photographic collages offer intimate, symbolic reflections on these same questions, transforming documentation into speculative diagrams and visual poems. Together, these practices are a layered inquiry into resilience, displacement, and the human and ecological systems we live within.

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.

Artist and photographer Mary Mattingly, Public art, land art, native plants, salt tolerant plants, halophyte plants, plant art, rising tides, rising sea levels, climate change art, eco art, art and ecology, climate change, sculpture park commission

Transformation

Public art challenges perceptions of the present and motivates people to engage, while contributing to what can become a collective reimagining.

"Ebb of a Spring Tide"

"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 large-scale water clock in the valley of Glacier National Park. It utilized glacial precipitation to tell time for nine months until the clock finally 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. While building Limnal Lacrimosa I thought of the Kōbō Abe novel, The Woman in the Dunes. In one room, people brought their own vessels to collect drips and contribute to the building's soundscape.

"Limnal Lacrimosa"

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"

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

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.