Curious about the Schuylkill Center’s LandLab Artist-in-Residence program?
Join Tina Ploakrz, Director for Environmental Art virtually and ask all of your questions! We’ll tell you more about the residency, its goals and the application process.
Tag Archives: environmental art
LandLab Info session (online)
Curious about the Schuylkill Center’s LandLab Artist-in-Residence program?
Join Tina Plokarz, Director of Environmental Art virtually and ask all of your questions! We’ll tell you more about the residency, its goals and the application process.
Our Native Wildflower Seed Packet Design contest Winner is: Monica Smith!
Monica Smith’s winning seed packet design
We are thrilled to welcome new members to the Schuylkill Center every day! Starting October 1, all new members will receive in their welcome kit our native wildflower seed packet designed by one of our very own Schuylkill Center members, Monica Smith. The contest ran from July 28, 2021, to August 20, 2021, and was open to creatives of all ages and skill levels. We were overwhelmed with the great response and received several beautifully designed submissions that made the decision very difficult. We want to send a special thank you to everyone that participated in the contest!
Monica’s design was inspired by the wildflower patches her husband planted on their farm this past year. She shared with us that the wildflowers provided them with “cheer and beauty” during the pandemic. As they continue to plant their gardens with native flowers, scrubs and trees, Monica hopes that the native wildflower seed packets will “inspire everyone to give them a try!”
Monica also shared that the reason she started receiving the Schuylkill Center’s Quill newsletter was that her dear friend, an artist who passed away last October, requested that memorial donations be made to the Schuylkill Center. Monica found our website and loved what she saw, so she sent a memorial donation. Monica has been a part of the Schuylkill Center community ever since!
A Reflection on Making Space for Us
In my role as the Environmental Art Intern, I had the great opportunity to go through each and every one of the photos that were submitted to the amazing kaleidoscope of nature in the exhibition “Citizen’s Eye.” In the process of sorting through them, I had time to reflect on these snapshots, and on my own experiences in the outdoors throughout the pandemic. While there are many beautiful and eye-catching images, the ones that stood out to me most were those that documented time spent with other people. When I reflect on the time I spent outside over the last year, I am reminded of the close friends and family that I share these memories with. In a time of being hyper-aware of the spaces around us, nature provided a refuge and became the setting for all kinds of gathering. A place where we could still spend time with each other while also maintaining the distance we needed apart from each other to be safe and respectful.
Nature Preschool at the Schuylkill Center by Rose Hammerman
What I see when I look through these images is a process of placemaking. Each photograph documents a way in which we are embedding emotional significance and new meaning into our natural environments. When we give these spaces new life, making them significant locations for living, gathering and communicating, we have transformed them into a place. While indoor spaces closed their doors to gathering, we turned to the outdoors to create new places to create memories. Celebration, exploration, connection, learning, mourning and many more rituals all took place in natural environments. Restaurants looked at parking lots and sidewalks and imagined new places for dining. This process was important in 2020. Natural placemaking reflected our needs to adjust to the circumstances, and it also reconnected us to a natural world that we are often at odds with. Whether or not you spent much time in the outdoors before the pandemic, your view of natural space definitely changed during the pandemic.
My hope is that post-pandemic, however that future looks, we will continue this process and continue to embed meaning into our natural spaces, whether it be the patch of grass on the sidewalk or the forest you went hiking through. Many were already doing this long before Covid-19 took ahold of our attention, but for others, time in quarantine allowed us to be more reflective and more presently focused on processes like this. We found a need to create new places, not by building or defining a space, but by being intentionally aware of what a space means to us and the memories that are connected to it.
Photo by CJ Walsh
I am glad to look through this collection of images and view the many ways in which we think about nature, both big and small, as important to our lives during a time of crisis and turmoil. As we imagine what futures await us, it is important to uphold these processes presently, and to imagine how natural space and its significance to us fits into these imagined futures.
—By CJ Walsh, Environmental Designer and former Art Intern at the Schuylkill Center.
Braiding Phragmites: Richard L. James Lecture
This summer environmental artist Sarah Kavage and designer Yaroub Al-Obaidi will construct a traditional Iraqi guesthouse, a mudhif, at the Schuylkill Center, one of the first such structures in America. It will be built entirely out of phragmites, an invasive wetland grass that threatens ecosystems worldwide and is one of the most abundant plants in the Delaware River watershed. At this event, the artists will speak about traditional reed practices, methods of eco-friendly harvesting and eradication, and the creation of their thatched sculpture, Al-Mudhif. The lecture explores not only displaced plants but ecology, migration, and healing. Learn how you can volunteer to create it while hearing about Kavage’s work with phragmites at many other centers as part of a watershed-wide art initiative, Lenapehoking~Watershed.
A New Lens on Nature: Community photos in “Citizen’s Eye”
It almost could be another tree, except for the ears. Look a little closer and you realize it’s a deer, stock-still and staring at you through the morning mist. As autumn leaves rustle, its silent appraisal reminds you: you are not alone. These woods are a shared space.
This encounter is captured in a photo by Peter DeStefano, one he submitted to the upcoming community show, “Citizen’s Eye — A Kaleidoscope of Nature.” More than 400 photos taken by over 200 people—Schuylkill Center staff, members, volunteers, neighbors, friends—document surprising encounters with nature from the past 10 months. Every photo is included in the exhibition, making for a truly kaleidoscopic display.
Photo by Peter DeStefano, submitted to “Citizen’s Eye”
Director of Environmental Art Tina Plokarz and her team have been sorting through these images, arranging them in our gallery, while looking for patterns. Some photos show structures of bridges and buildings; many are close-ups of animals or plants. They all come from a heightened sense of awareness to our natural surroundings and a willingness to stop and focus on smaller things. Taking such a photograph of nature requires that you not just move through the world but slow down enough to notice it. That you become a reciprocal part of it and live in it.
While each image reflects its photographer’s interest, collectively they begin to tell a story, one that begins with people going out to find nature—whether for peace, solitude, or recreation—and discovering that it’s always right beside them. Nature with a capital ‘N’ may conjure up romantic notions of sublime landscapes in National Parks, grand mountains, and expansive deserts. But nature with a lowercase ‘n’ encompasses everything around us. It’s “the small things we’re experiencing every day,” Tina says. “It’s not only about blooming flowers, it is also about the little weed on the sidewalk.”
A number of photos feature kids and adults outside—playing, building, exploring, living. Some are posed; some are candid; one is a silhouette. “When we really think about ‘nature’ and where this term comes from,” Tina says, “we quickly see that it’s not only the ‘natural world’—it’s also our world context, it’s also our body, it’s our human interaction with the environment. And I think that’s what I was really interested in seeing through other people’s eyes.”
Photo by Walther Vera, submitted to “Citizen’s Eye”
Nature is also around us, inevitably, in death. One particularly striking photo is of a funeral with masked mourners holding big red umbrellas and carrying a casket down the street. At first, it may seem like it doesn’t belong in a show of nature photography. But it made Tina consider how other nature photos capture death and decay. Several images, for instance, show mushrooms sprouting from dying trees. The rotting wood provides the nutrients necessary to grow a network of fungi that spreads throughout the forest—itself an offering to trees and a vital connection between them. “It’s this circle of life,” she says, “and death is part of our lives.”
Photo by Peter Handler, submitted to “Citizen’s Eye”
That topic of death is “hard to grapple with as it relates to the pandemic,” Tina says. But that’s why offering a place for people to share their experiences with nature is so powerful. “I think it allows us a space for grief, and for thinking how, when a tree is dying, it is not dying, it is just transforming into something else.”
Ultimately everything in nature is interconnected, everything shared. “Citizen’s Eye” reflects this in its community display, ready to welcome you in and transform your own encounters with nature.
“Citizen’s Eye —A Kaleidoscope of Nature” will be available to view in person in our gallery and online from January 21– March 21, 2021. Join us for a virtual opening reception on Thursday, Jan. 21 at 7 pm for a conversation with mythologist and social practice artist Li Sumpter Ph.D., John Heinz National Wildlife refuge manager Lamar Gore, and designer CJ Walsh, moderated by Tina Plokarz. For more information and to register, visit: https://www.schuylkillcenter.org/blog/event/citizens-eye-a-kaleidoscope-of-nature/
—By Emily Sorensen
Thursday Night L!VE (online): Environmental Artist Party
Are you an artist working with environmental themes? For several years, the Schuylkill Center has been holding twice-annual casual gatherings that give environmental artists the opportunity to connect with one another and share ideas. For this June’s event, we are moving the party online! The evening will include lightning talks by artists in attendance (let us know if you want to give one by RSVPing), and breakouts for smaller group conversation. BYO refreshments!
Please RSVP to attend, give a two-minute talk, and/or share an image of your work here:
Registered participants will receive a link to attend the virtual party, which will be held on the Zoom platform. Lightning talks will be limited to the first 15 artists who RSVP, and we’ll have a waitlist as needed.
POSTPONED – Earth Day at 50: Opening Reception
Often credited with launching the modern environmental movement, the first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, in a political climate thick with protests against the Vietnam War and the major American civil rights movement. On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, it feels like a very different time. Yet, the turmoil of our own moment and the increasing urgency of the climate crisis give the historical roots of the first Earth Day new relevance.
Artists have played an important role in Earth Day from the beginning, regularly contributing graphic posters and iconography to buoy the movement, participating in Earth Day exhibitions, and offering dramatic, performative actions. Recognizing this rich legacy, this exhibition of works responds to the question of what Earth Day means (or should mean) fifty years after it was first celebrated.
The opening reception will offer a first look at the exhibition, along with refreshments and remarks from the artists and curators.
20 Years of Environmental Art at the Schuylkill Center: Opening Reception
Founded in 2000 as an opportunity for artists and audiences to explore and interpret the natural world and current ecological issues, our environmental art program has brought hundreds of artists to the Schuylkill Center to present contemporary art work in the gallery and on our trails. This exhibition celebrates the art program’s history by inviting previous exhibiting artists to reflect on the work they did at the Schuylkill Center, and looks to the future of environmental art with newer, related work. The opening reception will include refreshments and remarks from the artists and curator.
More details about the exhibition can be found at: http://www.schuylkillcenter.org/art/?ha_exhibit=assemblage
The Tempestry Project Philadelphia Collection: Opening Reception
In 2019, the Schuylkill Center coordinated 37 volunteer knitters and crocheters to create a collection of Tempestries (or temperature tapestries) for Philadelphia from 1875 to 2018. Each Tempestry shows the daily high temperatures for a given year, with January at the bottom and December at the top. The Philadelphia Tempestry collection will be on long-term display at the Schuylkill Center to educate about how climate change is impacting our region. Join us to see the full collection on view for the first time and celebrate this intersection of craft and activism.
The Tempestry Project is a global climate data visualization project through fiber arts. All Tempestries use the same yarn colors and temperature ranges, creating a recognizable and globally comparable mosaic of shifting temperatures over time. The Tempestry Project was founded by Justin Connelly, Marissa Connelly, and Emily McNeil in Anacortes, WA. To date, hundreds of Tempestries have been made by crafters around the world.