Lisa Hein and Robert Seng
TREE-PEAT (Triple Turf)
TREE-PEAT (Triple Turf) is a three-part garden made of living plants and TrafficMaster turf. We begin with the material givens of weeds and astroturf, and the functional givens of social services, religious practice, and arts groups at this site.
We proceed as suggested by Ridgewood Presbyterian’s Trinitarian ironwork. But is Father, the generous hand, the perfect tree standing above the weeds, or the stump that sacrifices itself, like the Son? Does the dove of the Holy Spirit descend on a tender seedling to inspire or to devour it?
The cross of converging uses for this space is like the spokes of a wheel. With luck, each plot’s role then rolls into circulation. Less so, traffic unmastered, comes the curbside crush.
Lisa Hein is a Brooklyn artist who makes installations and sculpture conceptually seeded by their place or occasion. A pioneer female undergrad at Yale in the 1970s, Hein showed at Pat Hearn Gallery, NY into the 1990s, and created site projects for MoMA P.S.1, Socrates Sculpture Park and SculptureCenter in NY. More recently, she has installed people- powered fountains and goth garden sculpture in the US and Europe.
Since 1995, Hein has also collaborated with artist Robert Seng on installations with fluids, light, and sound. A partial list includes Jello masonry for Next50, Seattle Center; a tree rotisserie for Georgetown Glow in Washington, DC; and an audio Styx for the Brooklyn Naval Cemetery. They led a land art performance for the Walking Arts Conference in Greece, and floated a fish-like school of canoes above a river preserve. Hein and Seng have been honored with joint fellowships from NYFA, MacDowell and Yaddo.
Bob Seng is best known for his labor-intensive collage and marquetry works. He cuts up standard red and black EXIT signs into images of urban and natural landscapes, often under geological and environmental stress. Shaped by their source material, color, and intensity, these works carry an internal drive to move beyond the EXIT sign itself.
In addition to numerous group exhibitions in New York, the US, and internationally, these EXIT works appeared in recent solo shows at John Molloy Gallery, NY (2024 and 2025), as well as StART Art Fair in Seoul, Korea (2022), and Long Island University (2020), in Brooklyn.
Seng also collaborates with artist Lisa Hein on site-specific projects including “Headwaters,” featuring canoes suspended in trees in Arkville, NY; “Wheels Off,” a road-cut performance in Prespa, Greece; and projects at Socrates Sculpture Park, Seattle Center, and Georgetown Glow in Washington, DC. They have received joint fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and NYSCA/NYFA.
Fallow Frames Biennial 2026
September 19 — 20 2026
Ridgewood, Queens NY
1pm — 6pm
20 Empty Tree Beds - 24 Participating Artists
Ridgewood's sidewalks contain more than 800 empty street tree beds, roughly one for every 90 residents. For one weekend, twenty of these overlooked spaces will be transformed into temporary, site-specific artworks by 23 participating artists.
Visitors are invited to explore the neighborhood on foot, discovering how contemporary art can temporarily transform familiar streets while reflecting on public space, urban ecology, and the hidden potential of the city's overlooked landscape.