Barnaby Evans

Who is Barnaby Evans?

Barnaby Evans is an American artist who works in many media including site-specific sculpture installations, photography, film, garden design, architectural projects, writing and conceptual works. His original training was in the sciences, but he has been working exclusively as an artist for more than twenty-five years.

Evans is best known for WaterFire, a sculpture that he installed on the three rivers of downtown Providence, Rhode Island. In 1994, he created First Fire to celebrate the tenth anniversary of First Night Providence; in June 1996, he created Second Fire for the International Sculpture Conference and the Convergence International Arts Festival in Providence. With hundreds of volunteers and the broad support of the community he established WaterFire as an on-going installation in 1997. Evans also created WaterFire Houston in 1998 and installed Moving Water for the Institute of Contemporary Art's Vita Brevis Program in Boston in 2001. Among other installation works, Barnaby Evans created Temple to Milk in 1989, Protecting the Flag in 1990, Execution Coda in 1993, and Solstice Courtyard in 1997. Evans created Rikyu's Second Dream for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art for the summer of 1999, a related work, 613 Lengths of Bamboo, at the Brattleboro Museum of Art, and Heart of Glass for the Museum of Glass and Contemporary Art in Tacoma, Washington, both in 2001. Evans is currently exploring art installations for a number of other cities including St. Petersburg, Barcelona, and Seoul.