Author: news
Celebrate Winterfest at the Schuylkill Center
January 31, 2019By Mike Weilbacher
This Saturday-- Groundhog Day, appropriately enough-- the Schuylkill Center celebrates the reopening of our Wildlife Clinic with a family festival marking the day, Winterfest for Wildlife. Held at the Visitor Center on Hagy’s Mill Road and happening from noon to 4 p.m., the event includes nature walks, wildlife talks, face painting, wildlife-themed arts and crafts, storytimes courtesy of the Free Library, a bake sale, and more.
But the event kicks off at noon with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting. Since the Wildlife Clinic itself is typically closed to the general public as it is a hospital for ill and…
Eduardo Duenas Reflects on Caravans and Life in Honduras
January 17, 2019By Mike Weilbacher
While the Federal government remains mired in the longest shutdown ever (I am writing this on Sunday, so the fluid situation may change dramatically by the time you read this), a new caravan was scheduled to leave Honduras this week, thousands more beginning the long trek north to Mexico and the U.S.
This sad, hard, complex situation brought me to Eduardo Duenas, the Schuylkill Center’s Manager of School Programs, an educator on our staff who oversees a cadre of educators that help him teach school children on their visits here. A native Honduran, Eduardo has been in…
Reflecting on Remembering Water’s Way: Artist Guest post
January 10, 2019By Cassie Meador, Choreographer/Executive Artistic Director of Dance Exchange
Editor’s note: The LandLab resident artists of 2017-2018 (including this Dance Exchange project along with Kate Farquhar and Jan Mun) will be featured in a gallery exhibition at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, opening with a reception on January 10, 2019. More information at: https://www.cfeva.org/events/cfeva-exhibitions/landlab2019
Over this past year, I have been working with the Schuylkill Center as part of their LandLab Residency program to address an environmental challenge through dancemaking and community participation.
On our first research walk at the center, I noticed several large bundles of sticks being…
Photographing faces in the forest
January 3, 2019
When I go for a nature walk in a local forest, I see trees, birds, flowers, deer.
Not photographer Willard Terry.
When he goes for a walk — which he does a lot — he sees faces, lots of faces, incredible faces. Gnomes, ghosts, demons, animals, dinosaurs, people, aliens, all staring at him from tree trunks, tree roots, broken branches, gnarly bark, rock walls, even fence posts and barn siding.
Amazingly, once you start looking for them, there are faces everywhere.
And Terry has been photographing them.
He just published a book, “Pareidolia: Spirits and Faces of the Wissahickon and Schuylkill Valleys,”…
Community: Creative Connections at the Schuylkill Center
December 13, 2018Lauren Bobyock, Environmental Art and Communications Intern
What does community mean to you? Here at the Schuylkill Center, community means connection. We offer a wide range of ways for humans of all ages and backgrounds to engage with nature—whether you are spending time with your family outside at our weekly Schuylkill Saturdays, or attending our Meigs Environmental Leadership Award ceremonies to learn about strides our community members take to further environmentalism. Our community contributes to the Schuylkill Center in a variety of ways, and we are excited to honor all friends, members, volunteers, and staff in an exciting and creative…
Autumnal Stream Walk
November 20, 2018By Lauren Bobyock, Communications and Environmental Art Intern
It was the perfect fall day to get a little lost in the woods. There are two parallel streams running through the valleys at the Schuylkill Center — Meigs and Smith Runs — and that day two teams of staff and volunteers set out to learn more about them. On an artistic and scientific mission, we began this journey to contribute to our latest environmental art gallery exhibit by Stacy Levy: Braided Channel.
Stacy Levy is an environmental artist with installations all over the world including…
Ten Good Things about Trees
October 25, 2018by Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
I’ve been thinking about trees a lot these last few weeks, in part because the leaves are turning color and falling to the ground, something I look forward to every year. But also because the Schuylkill Center just found evidence of emerald ash borers on our massive property, something that is deeply troubling, as we are now faced with hundreds of dead and dying trees.
And because not far from the Schuylkill Center, a sister nonprofit cleared about an acre of trees to make room for a playground. Playgrounds, of course, are wonderful things, but…
Halloween Hikes and Hayrides
October 18, 2018At nighttime, we go to bed. (That's what I tell the kids, at least). We are diurnal mammals, awake only during the day. The Schuylkill Center's annual Halloween Hikes & Hayrides on October 26 & 27 gives us a chance to be nocturnal, if only for a moment, and to give children the thrill of exploring their senses in what my son calls, "the deep, dark forest". While we're there, we learn animal facts from friendly creatures (our own environmental educators dressed up in handmade costumes) and take a hayride to admire the moon. All of the "treats" given are the non-edible…
Art as Environmental Leadership: Stacy Levy to receive the Meigs award
October 15, 2018By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Every year, the Schuylkill Center gives the Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award to a deserving environmental professional for leaving a meaningful and lasting impact on their community and our region, and embodying a spirit of leadership, integrity, and vision.
In twelve years, we’ve never given this honor to an environmental artist—but that changes this year. On November 7th, Stacy Levy will be presented the Meigs award for her pioneering work joining the worlds of art and science throughout her career of creating compelling artwork, both site-specific and gallery-based.
In Levy’s words, she “use[s]…
Bodies of Water: Dance at the Schuylkill Center
October 4, 2018By Christina Catanese
This weekend, the Schuylkill Center will be presenting Remembering Water’s Way by Dance Exchange, the first site-specific dance event that the Center has commissioned in over a decade.
Dance Exchange is a DC-area arts organization that has been one of the Schuylkill Center’s LandLab artists in residence over the past year. The goal of the LandLab residency is for artists to engage audiences in the processes of ecological stewardship through scientific investigation and artistic creation. So we tasked these performers to also create art-based installations that prevent or remediate environmental damage, and it’s exciting to see…
