Love Ever After Points Back to The Beauty of New York Harbor, From Every Direction
/Visit Love Ever After in Times Square, a public installation of our work by Pernilla Ohrstedt from February 4 to March 4th!
In partnership with Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio, Times Square Arts, The World Around, The Mermaid Inn, Isco Spirits, Six Point, and LP Seafood and Specialty
“From the heart of New York City to its shoreline, our sculpture broadcasts love for people, community, and environment and highlights one of the city’s most exciting ecological initiatives, Billion Oyster Project, to the global audience of Times Square. After its installation in Times Square, the sculpture’s pieces will be placed in New York City’s shoreline. Monitored by hundreds of New York volunteers, the cages are used to create miniature oyster reefs that clean our waters.”
We are thrilled to announce our artistic collaboration with Pernilla Ohrstedt, a Swedish architect, designer, and the artist behind Love Ever After, a public exhibit showcasing our mission in Times Square from February 4th to March 4th, 2025. Pernilla is the winner of Times Square Arts’ 2025 Love & Design Competition, and she and her team have constructed a 50-square-foot geometric heart sculpture using 48 of our oyster cages, metal mesh, and custom paint made from 90 percent natural and mineral pigments. The heart is accompanied by one additional oyster cage filled with shells.
After the exhibit, Love Ever After will be recycled and placed into the Harbor as 192 Oyster Research Stations across our Oyster Research Station Sites. Pernilla aims to create beauty through simplicity, where reuse, regrowth, and love for the environment and community are intertwined.
For Agata Poniatowski, our Public Outreach Program Manager, the collaboration is exciting because the piece portrays the cyclical nature of our restoration work—from restaurant to reef—and guides visitors back to the story of New York Harbor, even from Times Square.
“Recycling is one of the primary throughlines in our work at Billion Oyster Project, and Love Ever After reminds me of the cyclical nature and role of the oyster—from one of our 80+ restaurant partners to our two shell piles into reef structures and then back into the Harbor as reef sites,” explains Agata. “Love Ever After tells the circular part of our story and points the public to the beauty of our Harbor, from every direction.”
To construct Love Ever After, a three-dimensional heart and human-scale experience, Pernilla worked with Zeke King Phillips, our Senior Community Stewardship Coordinator, to understand and showcase our Oyster Research Stations (ORS) and the invaluable role everyday New Yorkers play in urban estuary restoration.
“To me, the most important part of our work is the community, community members who get involved and take care of their part of the Harbor. Our Oyster Research Station program gives people an easy way to take care of and check in on the Harbor and know what's happening under the surface,” says Zeke. “This program plays an important role in helping us track oyster performance and the richness of species in hundreds of locations across the Harbor.”
So far, we’ve established 45+ Oyster Research Station Sites along New York City’s 520 miles of shoreline, most of them monitored by our team of community scientists. Each station, an 8 x 8 x 18-inch cage, contains up to 200 live oysters and is small enough to pull up by hand, functioning as a community data-gathering hub about that specific location of the Harbor. Or, as Agata describes our Oyster Research Station Sites, they become an oyster’s blueprint for a thriving ecosystem.
“Oysters create permanent homes out of whatever structure they stick to. They can grow around our cages, create habitats, and invite all other biodiversity in our Harbor to join them and become oyster reef ecosystems. It’s amazing to imagine how much wildlife each oyster research station hosts,” she says.
In addition to recycling, another core through line of our work across all programs at Billion Oyster Project is designing for “nature-based solutions.” For example, when we share about our oyster reef restoration work, we emphasize it as a nature-based solution for shoreline resilience. Oyster reefs provide engineering benefits similar to traditional construction techniques, such as diffusing wave energy and allowing sediment to accumulate and stabilize, reducing or preventing shoreline erosion, and enhancing coastal resilience against more intense and frequent storm events.
Like with Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio, our artistic collaborations are nature-based solutions, too. From bridging design, science, culture, politics, history, and trends, artists bring awareness and help us make connections.
“Here's a very talented artist [Pernilla Ohrstedt] who is bringing amazing awareness towards the circular nature of our work, from Times Square to New York Harbor, while also mirroring the full cycle in the actual sculpture she’s building,” explains Agata. “The translation to the general public is so important.”
We invite you to visit Love Ever After by Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio from February 4 to March 4th, 2025 in Times Square. Learn more about the details of the exhibit via the press release here. Check out Pernilla’s work and @pernilla_ohrstedt. Learn more about our Oyster Research Stations and other volunteer opportunities, including how you can become a community scientist. Many thanks to our partners, Times Square Arts, The World Around, The Mermaid Inn, Isco Spirits, Six Point, and LP Seafood and Specialty for helping us bring it alive and supporting our work!
Are you an artist who wants to collaborate with us? We’d love to hear from you. Get in contact with Agata and her team at publicoutreach@billionoysterproject.org. Looking for waterfront volunteer opportunities and how to get involved in community oyster restoration? Stay tuned for our full upcoming list of public events that officially launch in April, and here’s an overview of how you can get involved:
Take a Public Tour, starting in March 2025!
Book a Private Tour with a Group (10 minimum)
Book a Corporate Volunteer Day for your workgroup
Volunteer at Your Local Shoreline for:
Shoreline cleanups
Fabrication
Oyster Research Station monitoring
Water quality sampling
Wild oyster surveys
Take Our Training & Become a Community Scientist or Ambassador
Visit Our Upcoming New Exhibit House at Building 20 on Governors Island: We will soon be opening our newest space and offering quarterly exhibits, guest lectures, networking events, Oyster happenings, and hands-on oyster opportunities. Stay tuned!
