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Barnaby Evans is an artist and urban consultant experienced in many media from public art to photography and film, from ecological ecosystems to environmental restoration and design. Evans has wide experience in inspiring public engagement through public art, civic ritual, applied metaphor, and community dialog aimed at nurturing deeper community engagement and engaging with urban challenges. Evans studied ecology and urban studies at Brown University. He creates artworks involving large scale, urban interventions and site-specific installations that serve to catalyze broad citizen involvement in transformational change for their communities in the context of facing larger environmental challenges. Evans’ installation artwork WaterFire has been called “a vision of fire and architecture” that “engages and mesmerizes viewers with an emotional power very few works of art ever achieve. He has engaged widely different communities with interpretations of WaterFire first in Providence in 1994 and then in Houston, Kansas City, Tacoma, and other sites in the United States; and internationally in Rome and Singapore. Evans received the 2003 Kevin Lynch Award from MIT, the 2003 Rudy S. Bruner Silver Award for Urban Excellence, the 2010 Distinguished Service to the Arts award from the National Governors Association, the Providence Renaissance Award, the RI Council on the Humanities’ 2011 Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities, and the 2020 Pell Award. In 2012, WaterFire was recognized with a $454,000 grant from ArtPlace, a consortium of foundations focused on expanding the NEA’s interest in Creative Placemaking and in experimenting in ways to involve the arts in creating urban vibrancy. Evans led the team for the award-winning restoration of an abandoned industrial Brownfield building into the award-winning WaterFire Arts Center in Providence. He has received honorary doctorates from Brown University, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island College, Providence College, and the University of Rhode Island.
