Author: news
A playground for artists, Part II
October 5, 2017By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
The Schuylkill Center asked six artists from the former co-op Nexus to respond to the history and physical space of Brolo Hill Farm site at the Schuylkill Center for the show Ground Play from September 19th - November 28th, 2010. Read our August post for a profile on the other three artists from…
Playing with place: Looking back on Sau Pines
September 14, 2017
by Aaron Asis, Making in Place artist
Back in May, Sau Pines was created to celebrate the spirit of the Pine Grove — as part of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s Making in Place exhibition — which featured the work of 14 different Art in the Open artists.
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The installation itself consisted of a series of visual tree wraps to highlight some of the unique environmental characteristics of the Pine Grove. A series of matching colored timbers were also distributed throughout the Pine Grove to activate visitor interaction within the context of the broader…
Shadows in the Forest
September 7, 2017By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
Marisha Simons attempted to catalog human impact upon the environment in her installation, Ghost Forest. Ghost Forest was part of the show Ghosts and Shadows from September 6th, 2008 - January 2nd, 2009 presented in partnership with the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and guest curated by Warren Angle.
Simons was one of the…
Plants and People Connect through Art
August 30, 2017[caption id="attachment_268857" align="alignleft" width="824"] Photo courtesy of Vaughn Bell[/caption]
By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Most people know that we rely on plants for the food we eat and the air we breathe, but the interconnections between plants and people actually go much deeper and are more nuanced. Scientists continue to discover the complexities of how plants take in and respond to information, even communicating with each other through underground networks and chemical signals. Human systems powerfully influence plant communities, locations, and health - and they also exert a powerful influence over us.
Yet, despite the intricacies of…
Redefining School
August 17, 2017by Nicole Brin, Assistant Director of Early Childhood Education
Preface: The past 7 years teaching young children have taught me more about myself, our education system, and human nature as a whole than I could ever have imagined when starting out. The most recent 4 years spent teaching with the Schuylkill Center Nature Preschool have broadened my views of what is possible in the world of education and led me to the next step in my professional journey. As I move out of the classroom and into the role of Assistant Director of Early Childhood Education, I hope to learn, share, and…
A playground for artists, Part I
August 3, 2017
By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
Part of the Schuylkill Center’s mission is to use our forests and fields as a living laboratory; for the art program, that means that we provide opportunities for artists to use our site as an place for experimentation in their artistic practice - which can some times look and feel a lot like…
Naturaleza por dentro
July 20, 2017Por: Eduardo Dueñas, Lead Environmental Educator | For an English version of this blog post, see here.
Siempre me encantaron los olores, colores y sabores de los dias. Yo era un nino inquieto que le gustaba levantar piedras en el patio de mi casa para ver que sorpresa me esperaba. Ese mismo nino que corria afuera cada vez que llovia para poder oler la tierra mojada.
Un nino que durante los partido de futbol le gustaba chupar pedazos de cesped y tirar piedras al rio.
Desde muy temprana edad me interesaron las plantas y los animales, gustos que me llevaron a…
Nature from Within | Naturaleza por dentro
July 20, 2017By Eduardo Dueñas, Lead Environmental Educator | Para una versión en Español de este post, por favor ver aquí.
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved the scents, colors, and surprises of each day. I was a curious child who always liked to pick up rocks in the yard of my house to see what surprise awaited me underneath- a colorful beetle, a squirmy worm, or a family of ants. That same curiosity drove me to run outside everytime it rained to feel the rain and smell wet earth. I was the curious kid who would suck…
Red-tailed Hawks at the Franklin Institute: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway as Wildlife Habitat
July 13, 2017By guest contributor Christian Hunold, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University
In the spring of 2012 I stumbled across a community of amateur naturalists who were drawn to Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway not by the museums or the cultural events, but by a pair of red-tailed hawks nesting on a second-story window ledge of the Franklin Institute. Grid Magazine had requested some pictures of the hawks, and so I spent one sunny afternoon in late May photographing the half-grown chicks huddled on the nest at the corner of 21st and Winter Street.
I recall feeling a little bored: where…
Naturalist’s Notebook: The Missing Sponge
July 11, 2017
By Andrew Kirkpatrick, Manager of Land Stewardship
If you take a walk along Smith Run, coming up Ravine Loop below Penn’s Native Acres, the hillsides where the beeches, oaks and maples grow show signs of distress. The structural roots of the trees are visible at the soil line when they should be tucked away cozily wrapped in the warm blanket of leaf litter and organic rich soil. Instead, because of exotic invasive earthworms, which can be observed by scraping away the thin layer of leaves on the ground, the roots are exposed and left to fend for themselves in all…
