BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Moss has never had much of a chance to grow on the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library. The triangle of land on which it sits has done time as a courthouse, a market, and a women’s prison. For the past 40 years, a city-run community garden has enjoyed an unofficial (but cozy) relationship with the neighboring Victorian Gothic library — which recently turned over a new leaf by adding another page to its ever-evolving story.
Walk through the main doors, make a sharp right, then descend the black wrought iron spiral staircase — and before you reach the Reading Room, you’ll pass through the newly established Little Underground Gallery. That’s where Village resident and West Chelsea studio artist Scotto Mycklebust has created “Everything in the Garden is Rosy.”
This immersive, floor-to-ceiling installation beckons you to stand on a carpet of fresh AstroTurf, contemplate the dreamy bird tweets, and groove to the variety of larger-than-life flowers covering the gallery’s brick foundation walls (along with strategically placed windows, where the view is nothing but blue skies and white puffs of cloud). Mycklebust regards his artificial garden as “a bridge between our two lives, inviting our examination of both — in relation to where we are, where we have been, and where we are going as organic beings in an increasingly electronic community.”
Like the lush greenery of its aboveground counterpart, this compelling display of nature’s intensity won’t last forever. Each month, a new Village resident will show their work in the Little Underground Gallery, which is being curated to represent a wide range of creative disciplines and artistic sensibilities (a Halloween-themed October exhibit has already been booked).
The Mycklebust installation is on view through Aug. 31 during library hours (Mon & Wed. 10 a.m.–8 p.m. Tues. & Thurs. 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 10 a.m.–5 p.m.). In the Little Underground Gallery at the Jefferson Market Library (at the corner of Sixth Ave. & 10th St.). Artist info at scottomycklebust.com. For Jefferson Market Library info, call 212-243-4334 or visit nypl.org./locations/jefferson-market. Community garden info at jeffersonmarketgarden.org.
