LandLab is an environmental art residency at the Schuylkill Center that
interweaves art, ecological restoration, and public engagement. LandLab
offers resources and space on the Center’s 340-acre wooded property
for multidisciplinary artists to engage audiences in environmental
advocacy, scientific investigation, and artistic creation.
The LandLab Residency blends art and environmental science to engage
diverse audiences in innovative investigations of environmental problems.
Selected artists/teams receive professional development and mentorship by
partnering with scientists and fellow arts professionals to create
original, site-specific installations on our land and in our gallery. Our
art programs and events engage residents throughout the region in
discussions about current environmental issues, the artists' creative
processes, and their experimental proposals.
Past Projects
LandLab 2017-2018
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Dance Exchange
activated Philadelphia's waterways through movement exploration with
visitors and local artists and scientists, culminating in installation
and performance at the Schuylkill Center using interdisciplinary
dancemaking to move community members from a place of observation to
participation to active stewardship.
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Kate Farquhar
is a Philadelphia based artist and landscape architect whose work
occupies the space where habitat, green infrastructure and myth overlap.
Kate conceived a collection of mythic micro-environments–called
Synestates–to thoughtfully insert materials or elements from the
cityscape into the Center's wild and managed lands, speculating about
future possibilities for contact between people and the environment.
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Jan Mun
explored mycoremediation and shared her passion for mushrooms as
"ecological instigators," ultimately constructing The Mushroom Vortex
Maze–wooden logs inoculated with three types of edible mushrooms
to create separate rows that each form a logarithmic/golden ratio
spiral.
LandLab 2014-2015
Read the full brochure
here
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WE THE WEEDS
(a collaboration between artist Kaitlin Pomerantz and botanist Zya Levy)
created a woven installation constructed from invasive vines,
simultaneously encouraging dialog about the global movement of plants,
and removing hazardous invasive species from the forest.
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Jake Beckman
explored the detritus cycle of a forest and its disruption by invasive
earthworms, creating a sculptural installation that makes these hidden
processes visible to visitors.
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Marguerita Hagan, B.H. Mills, and Maggie Mills built Native Pollinator Garden, a pollinator-focused
series of raised beds accompanied by a sculptural installation to
educate the public on native plants, chemical-free gardening,
sustainable practices, and the relationship between humans and bees.
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#StormSnakes
by Leslie Birch, explores the issue of stormwater run-off using
electronics to collect data from a Schuylkill Center stream.
For more information about LandLab, please reach out to
art@schuylkillcenter.org.
Past LandLab projects have been in collaboration with
The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA)
who provide career development services for professional visual artists,
help artists reach their audiences, and promote interest in and
understanding of the visual arts among citizens of the Philadelphia
region.
Funding was provided by the Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for
the Arts, the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and the William Penn
Foundation, as well as in part by the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts
program of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and PECO.
