A gigantic octopus sits on the dock of the Boston Harbor in Charlestown. Children crawl all over it. They scale its arms, and playfully duck under its belly. A forgotten school bag dangles from one of its bronze tentacles.
Nearby, a rabbitwoman and a hippo sip on coffee by an anchor. Ten members of the animal kingdom dine down the road under the Tobin Bridge.
These sculptures are the newest residents of Charlestown – part of the “Bridge of Joy” exhibit – and they’ve already become minicelebrities. Everyone wants a picture with the 36-foot-long octopus and other bronze animals that found a new home tucked up against the highway and the harbor.
Why We Wrote This
A new sculpture exhibition under the Tobin Bridge – the demarcation point between Charlestown and the Navy Yard – was designed to revitalize Massachusetts’ oldest neighborhood. Public art offers a chance for everyone to enjoy, as witnessed by the children clambering all over the octopus and residents enjoying coffee with a bronze hippo.
Having arrived from New York’s World Trade Center Plaza on July 31, the trio of sculptures known together as Wildlife Wonders brings new life to the community. Behind the effort is local nonprofit Navy Yard Garden & Art, which received a city grant to revitalize the neighborhood. It chose public art as a vehicle.
“Public art makes people stop. It creates a shared moment in an unexpected place. Unlike a gallery, it’s not exclusive or elitist. It’s for everyone,” says artist Gillie Schattner. Ms. Schattner and her husband, Marc, have placed more than 100 wildlife sculptures in over 40 cities around the world. This is their first exhibition in Boston.
“Art in the public realm can spark conversations, change perceptions, and in the best cases, create empathy,” says Mr. Schattner.
The Wild Table of Love under the Tobin Bridge keeps two chairs open for humans to take a seat. John Macintosh’s daughter climbs up on one, posing for a picture with the animals. She has her eyes set on the lion. The 3-year-old is currently obsessed with the movie “The Lion King” and brought her stuffed animal to join the life-size version at the table. “She’s been talking about it ever since my wife came down and saw it,” Mr. Macintosh says.
The Tobin Bridge is the physical divider of Charlestown and the Navy Yard, two sides of one neighborhood marked by wealth disparity. Residents still feel a sense of unity. “It doesn’t matter what class you come from, you’re still mingling,” Charlestown local Dennis Reddy says. Mr. Reddy sees people from both sides cross the underpass daily.
“One square mile. This whole place. One mile that way, one mile this way, one mile that,” he says with pride. Once a working-class district known for bank robberies, the oldest neighborhood in Massachusetts has become one of the most expensive in Boston. “You either got money or you don’t.”
Under the bridge, “you sort of scurry through like a rat,” says Jules Pieri, one of the founding members of the Navy Yard Garden & Art. Placing public art on this side of town is a first for the organization. Usually, The Wild Table of Love would sit with the other sculptures in the Navy Yard, home to million-dollar residences and private yachts.
“We want to be courageous and bold and mean it,” Ms. Pieri says. The organization aims to help connect people who don’t have a lot of interaction, but share a community.
Mr. and Ms. Schattner hope that their mission of wildlife preservation can bring people together. “Everyone can relate to the idea of protecting what’s vulnerable,” Mr. Schattner says. “Art can cross boundaries where words sometimes can’t.” At The Wild Table of Love sit a variety of animals that normally wouldn’t be seen together in the wild.
It’s a metaphor for humanity. “We all come from different walks of life, backgrounds, beliefs but there’s always a place at the table if we make room for each other,” says Ms. Schattner. Hailing from Sydney (Marc) and London (Gillie), the artists see their work as a symbol of coexistence, even in the face of tension or inequality.
Melanie Soto, community resource specialist at the Charlestown Coalition, feels that the neighborhood still has “an invisible line that maybe some folks are not crossing.” Charlestown is also home to the area’s largest affordable housing development, Bunker Hill Apartments.
With the sculptures in town, she sees an opportunity for people from both sides of the neighborhood to “intermingle in a way that they maybe have not before.”
Walking up to the sculptures, she teared up. Ms. Soto, who works with the Charlestown Coalition’s youth organization Turn It Around, was one of the community partners who got to pick from four artist proposals. “Our kids deserve nice things,” she says. “This shows them that they are worthy of all these great things coming right to their door.”
Ms. Soto hopes that the sculptures boost Charlestown’s reputation. “People are going to come to their neighborhood and treat it like a Boston Common or a Public Garden and experience it in the way that our kids already experience it,” she says. “It is a beautiful, specific, special thing.”
Navy Yard Garden & Art is hoping to implement programming that can help the community in additional ways, starting with food insecurity. In collaboration with the Harvest on the Vine food pantry, the organization used the opening event to collect food donations for the community. The sculptures The Hippo Was Hungry to Try New Things and The Wild Table of Love both feature different food items.
Mr. Reddy has found a new place for his daily breakfast. “I come down every morning at 5 o’clock, I get on the waterfront, watch the sun come up,” he says. “It is lovely.”
Now he is in good company. “Maybe I’ll have my coffee right there now with my Mr. Octopus and Mr. Hippo.”
