Over the past year, Evelyn Rydz has focused her artistic practice on two site specific outdoor projects that address her strong connection to local bodies of water and how our shared histories will impact the significance of these places during our lifetime and beyond. In Rydz's gifted hands, water becomes the transcendent conduit for our hopes and concerns in this ever-changing world.

Convergence: Porous Futures 2025, Steel, Native Plants, Natural Stones

A site-specific installation created for the Boston Public Art Triennial at the Charlestown Navy Yard Lot Lab.

Situated near the meeting point of the Mystic and Charles Rivers, this project is shaped by their unique histories and aquatic characteristics as they merge and flow into global waters. A reflective sculpture, modeled after a storm drain, hovers over a living garden featuring bioswales shaped to mirror the geography of the two rivers. This design draws attention to the often-overlooked water infrastructure and its environmental impact amidst increasing weather extremes. Bioswales, channels designed to capture stormwater runoff known to degrade river ecosystems, are key to this integration. Below the sculpture, a climate-resilient garden of native plants thrives, acting as a natural filter for pollutants that enter shared water bodies. Convergence: Porous Futures illustrates the joining of local and global, the impact of the individual on the collective, and questions what it is we choose to preserve, both past and present.

https://www.thetriennial.org/evelyn-rydz

Holding Water, 2025, Cast Glass, Steel, Concrete and Field Stones

A site-responsive project by Evelyn Rydz, created for the Nature Sanctuary exhibition at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

Cupped hands, in gradient shades of blue glass, cascade in a formation that suggests flowing water into this oversized vessel. Evelyn Rydz cast the hands of local environmental caretakers and those who have a special connection to water, including Flint’s Pond, the body of water in view at deCordova. Flint’s Pond is a protected reservoir and provides drinking water to residents of Lincoln. Drawn to the diverse ways that people protect, pollute, and access water, Rydz named this sculpture Holding Water. The phrase alludes to a kind of “truth telling”—in this case about how water is sacred and necessary to all life, and yet clean water is not a given for so many.?The glass hands are positioned in relationship to each other to suggest a passing of responsibility and knowledge across generations and among communities. The varying shades of blue of the glass and vessel are inspired by Rydz’s many photographs of the nearby water, which is constantly changing due to climate shifts, light, and time of year.

https://thetrustees.org/content/evelyn-rydz-holding-water/

Multidisciplinary artist Evelyn Rydz creates work across drawing, site-responsive installations and community projects. Her artistic practice centers on interconnected bodies of water, highlighting relationships between personal histories, human impacts, and threats to natural and cultural ecosystems. In her participatory projects, Rydz creates spaces for intergenerational community conversations and collective art making exploring immigration, public health, ancestral foods, and ways we are shaped by our sense of home.

Rydz is a recipient of the Artadia Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, U.S. Latinx Art Forum Charla Fund, Brother Thomas Fellowship, SMFA Traveling Fellowship, Artist Resource Trust Grant, Visual Arts Finalist of the Cintas Knight Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship.

Recent exhibitions include features at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Galeria Ponce + Robles, Madrid, Spain; Anchorage Museum, AK; USC Fisher Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA; Palmer Art Museum, Penn State University, PA; Jordan Snitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; Palacio de Justicia, Matanzas, Cuba; El Parque Cultural del Caribe, Barranquilla, Colombia; DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA among others.