Matthew Hincman P

Title: Jamaica Park Bench

Medium: Stickers

Location: Jamaica Plains, MA (2006)

The "mirror and duplicate" tool in a Computer Assisted Drafting (CAD) program and the benches that populate the paths around the Jamaica Pond inspired The Jamaica Pond Bench. Strolling around the pond one day, I mentally applied this CAD tool to the bench before me, and imagined this passive site transformed. This disruption of site was then doubled through the guerilla installation of the object. The high craftsmanship of the object compounded the initial disruption by engendering affection and support for the sculpture by those who were initially responsible for its removal from the public space. The bench was then re-installed by the de-installers, and it was allowed to exist for four months at the site, garnering public interaction daily.

Matthew Hincman is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston . He received MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2001, and his BFA from MassArt in 1993. In 2007 Matthew received an Individual Artist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. During two weeks in the winter of 2002 at Handshouse Studio in Norwell, MA, Matthew was lead blacksmith and first submariner for the construction and testing of a full-scale working replica of the first working submarine: David Bushnell's wooden Turtle from 1776, as seen on the Discovery Science Channel series "Machines Time Forgot."