This new exhibition presents the suspended and illuminated plastic works of renowned environmental artist Aurora Robson which call attention to the global challenge of single-use waste. Viewers will be able to wander through the gallery and continue outside, where Robson's illuminated sculptures have been installed along the trails.

More Information about the exhibition is available Here.

LandLab Artist Residency, 2014-2015

#StormSnakes by Leslie Birch
Ongoing
On Upper Fields Trail & Woodock Trail

#StormSnakes explores the issue of stormwater run-off using electronics to collect data from a Schuylkill Center stream. Partnering with Stroud Water Research Center, Birch created a cost-effective DIY sensor and burlap snake sculptures to stop and slow excess water on our property.

Future Non-Object #1: Sol's Reprise by Jake Beckman
Ongoing
On the Widener Trail

Jake Beckman explored the detritus cycle of a forest and its disruption by invasive earthworms, creating sculptural installations that make these hidden processes visible to visitors. This wooden sculptural installation inoculated with local fungal spores will break down over time and enrich soil health.

Native Pollinator Garden by Maggie Mills, B.H. Mills, and Marguerita Hagan
Ongoing
On the Widener Trail

This installation by provides a chemical-free, native pollinator garden for the bee population on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center. Help us learn more about pollinators on our property by observing the insects visiting this garden and recording your data on the sheets in the box.

Interwoven by WE THE WEEDS, Lead artist Zya S. Levy, with Kaitlin Pomerantz
Ongoing
On Gray Fox Loop

WE THE WEEDS created a site-specific woven installation constructed from invasive vines, simultaneously encouraging dialog about the global movement of plants and removing hazardous invasive species from the forest.

Rain Yard

by Stacy Levy
On permanent display

Rain Yard is an interactive artwork on permanent display in the Schuylkill Center's Sensory Garden. This innovative artwork serves both a practical function�mitigating stormwater runoff from our building�and an interpretive function�highlighting the critical role that soil and plants play in the water cycle.

Through interdisciplinary collaboration with ecologists, engineers, designers, educators and horticulturists, this artwork was created. It is meant to engage and educate. Along with the installation is an engaging graphic book about water, stormwater run-off, and information about the project.

Artist statement

Rain Yard is a collaboration with the rain. It captures the rain from the roof and leads the rain to a planted place to soak into the ground. Rain needs time and space to soak in, but in most of our built world, we do not give any space for the rain to act like rain�instead we pipe it away. This artwork is making a home for the rain.

My work is about making metaphors for people to understand how nature works. I always hope my pieces will give someone a new avenue to understand something about nature. I think that everyone deserves a re-explanation of the everyday workings of the world. In some of my work, art can be an important new way to fix things that are not working well on a site. Rain Yard is trying to fix a rainwater issue in an artful way. An engineer might fix a rainwater problem one way, and a landscape gardener would do it another way. I have tried to take all of those perspectives and to solve the problem while making an intriguing spatial and visual experience out of the solution.

About the artist

Stacy Levy is an artist who works with natural processes of the surrounding nature. She received a BA at Yale (1984) where she majored in sculpture with a minor in forestry. This combination of art and nature has remained entwined throughout her path as an artist. Stacy co-founded Sere Ltd., a design firm specializing in native landscape restoration for municipal, corporate and private landscapes across the mid-Atlantic region. The firm works to bring the architecture of a healthy ecosystem back to disturbed forest landscapes. In 1988, Levy attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and earned an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1991) while working as a forester. The combination of forestry and art has continued to inform her practice.

For more of Stacy's work, visit: http://www.stacylevy.com.

Rain yard was made possible by generous support from Arcelor Mittal, Johnson & Johnson, Penn Engineering, Sherwin Williams and the National Endowment for the Arts.

An ecological art project on the Schuylkill Center's Widener Trail

Welcome Home, by Seattle-based artist Vaughn Bell, is an ongoing environmental art project designed to deepen visitors' understanding of how the Schuylkill Center's forest functions. The installation provides a �home� for plants that are native to Pennsylvania's early forests, to dramatically illustrate the impact of invasive plants on the forest ecosystem.

Bell and a team of Schuylkill Center staff and volunteers, cleared the area inside the home of all invasive plant species, prepared the ground, re-planted with native plants, and created an enclosure to protect them while they grow.

Welcome home! Your hosts, Prunus serotina (black cherry), Cercis canadensis (eastern redbud), Lindera bezoin (spicebush), and their friends welcome you to their home. The plants within this house are all species native to the area, evolving here for centuries, providing food and habitat for countless bird and animal species.

But human activities like logging, farming, and urbanization have transformed this landscape over time. We have introduced new species that have become invasive, crowding out natives while diminishing the forest's diversity. Deer overbrowse young seedlings, not allowing the forest to regenerate. Even the climate is changing.

Now, the plants that live in this house require our care and protection to keep them safe while they become established.

Visitors are welcome to come in and meet the native plants inside. Over time, you can see how the garden grows!

For more about this project and Vaughn's work: http://vaughnbellblog.wordpress.com/

About the Artist

Vaughn Bell creates interactive projects and immersive environments that deal with how we relate to our environment. She has exhibited her sculpture, installation, performance, video and public projects internationally. Most recently, Vaughn created a commission for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and another for the Edith Russ Site for New Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany. Her work has been featured in Artnews, Afterimage, and Arcade Journal, among others. Vaughn received her MFA from the Studio for Inter-related Media at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA and her undergraduate degree from Brown University. She currently is based in Seattle.

Founded in 1965, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) is one of the first urban environmental education centers in the country. It encompasses over 340 acres of privately held land in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. SCEE's mission is to promote the preservation and improvement of our natural environment through education, outreach and the conservation of its land. It provides a wide variety of award-winning educational programming for schools and the public, and is home to the Schuylkill Center Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. The environmental art department at the Schuylkill Center incites curiosity and sparks awareness of the natural environment through art, and works collaboratively to create exhibitions of the highest quality that attract, educate and inspire the public. ( https://www.schuylkillcenter.org/).

For more information, contact us at artprogram@schuylkillcenter.org, or call 215 482 7300 x113

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