How do you see nature? Schuylkill Center photo contest 2014
February 6, 2014In celebration of the opening of Frost in the Environmental Art Gallery, the Schuylkill Center invites community members to send photos to our Winter 2014 Photo Contest.
Submit your winter photos by February 27!
More about Frost:
It is safe to say, this has been a winter of surprises, with temperatures plummeting well below what we usually expect for this region and snowfall far above. This cold is actually at the heart of our upcoming exhibition, Frost. We’re thrilled to welcome two Philadelphia artists to take on winter with a show that runs from February 15 – April 18. Amie…
Winter in the Forest
January 15, 2014By Melissa Nase, Manager of Land Stewardship
Winter provides a simplified, yet inspiring version of the forest we know so well in other seasons. I welcome its cool, calm colors after many weeks of the unrelenting holiday glitz and chaotic pace. In many ways, it is so much easier to proverbially, “see the forest for the trees” in this season. Uncovering the beauty and details of this place during winter is magical. Especially after a snow, the silence paired with the subdued greys and whites removes the sensory overload that can distract in other seasons. Texture, pattern, and form come…
Of Sassafras & Spirits
January 6, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Beer, wine, scotch, tequila, even sake all have at least this in common: they come from plants. In her wonderful book The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of flowers, trees, and fungi that we have transformed into alcohol over the centuries.
Join us at the Schuylkill Center on Thursday, January 16 at 7:30 p.m. for a special chat-and-sip event. We’ll talk about and read from the book, and Olivia Carb from Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, that extraordinary Philadelphia distiller, shares their drinks like Root, Snap, and Rhubarb Tea, all…
Wild Turkeys: The Truth Behind the Bird
November 26, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
On Thursday, Americans of all shapes, sizes and colors gather around tables overflowing with colorful cornucopias of food. And whether that table includes cranberry sauce or couscous, tortellini or tortillas, the centerpiece of the meal is likely that quintessential American bird, the turkey.
Consider that turkey, one of our biggest natural neighbors. Likely one of your holiday plates includes an image of the tom turkey, chest all puffed out, strutting its stuff. That's not how turkeys appear in November. Sleeker, thinner, turkeys are now forming winter single-sex flocks, a tom and its brothers joining a…
Goldenrod and Asters in the Last Chance Cafe
October 15, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Autumn is notable for so many things: crisp weather, colorful trees, birds and butterflies migrating south, and my favorite sign of the season, fields overflowing with goldenrod and aster.
Yes, goldenrod, scourge of those hay fever commercials, the ones with some poor sneezing schmuck standing shoulder-deep in a field of stunning yellow goldenrod, waving the white flag of surrender. Trouble is, goldenrod doesn't give you hay fever. Its pollen is too heavy, dense, sticky—we don't breathe it.
But goldenrod unfortunately blooms at the same time as ragweed, a wind-pollinated nightmare that pumps trillions of pollen spores into the sky, praying one…
A Silent Fall: Vanishing Monarchs
October 3, 2013[caption id="attachment_364" align="alignleft" width="329"] A Monarch dries its wings after emerging from its chrysalis in our front garden. (Schuylkill Center, 2013)[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
The new fall season brings a chain of wonderful events: trees turning color, birds migrating south, goldenrod fields bursting in bloom. But one of my favorite fall phenomena is sadly and strangely absent this year.
There are almost no Monarch butterflies afoot these days. All summer, I’ve seen only three at the Schuylkill Center. And my compatriots at other centers like Bowman’s Hill in New Hope and Peace Valley in Doylestown report the same…
Beyond the Surface
August 13, 2013On May 31, 2013 The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education presented Beyond the Surface: Environmental Art in Action - A conference of ideas and innovative thinking about the relationships between art and nature.
This unique, first time conference brought over 100 professionals from the region and beyond (as far as Maine and North Carolina) to hear from the Advisory Team about their own individual practices, and then to join them in conversations. Below are each team members’ presentations, for those of you who wish to hear from them directly.
The afternoon sessions were titled “Activate,” Integrate” and “Engage.” Undoubtedly, this one-day conference has…
Land Lab Program
August 2, 2013[caption id="attachment_913" align="alignleft" width="617"] Stacy Levy, Kept Out, 2009[/caption]
We are very excited to announce our new residency program, The LandLab Program.
As a collaboration between The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), The Landlab program invites professional artists to create projects which operate on the multiple platforms of artistic creation, ecological restoration and education. Specifically, four paid residencies of $3,000 each, taking place from April – October 2014, will grant selected artists resources and space on SCEE’s 340-acre property to engage audiences in the processes of ecological stewardship through scientific investigation…
Collaboration As a Means, Not an End
June 13, 2013By Amy Lipton, Curator and SCEE advisory panel member, 2012-2013
In my work with ecoartspace over the past 12 years focusing on ecological artists and their projects, the term collaboration has been frequently evoked. The intention behind much of this work is to restore, remediate or transform damaged landscapes and also to educate the public about specific environmental problems or challenges. Artists taking on this imperative seek to inspire modification of human behaviors that have negatively impacted the earth’s ecological systems. Their work embodies what German artist Joseph Beuys coined as “social sculpture” over 50 years ago to illustrate art's potential…
Post Normal Art
March 13, 2013by Frances Whitehead
"All that was ‘normal’ has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense… We will have to imagine ourselves out of postnormal times—with an ethical compass and a broad spectrum of imaginations from the rich diversity of human cultures."
- Ziauddin Sadar, Welcome to Postnormal Times, 2009
So prevalent are the terms “post” and “post-normal” as signifiers for the shifting ground of contemporary thought, that we must ask: “What is post-normal art?”
Thomas Kuhn’s term “paradigm shift” has entered…
