Tag: environmental art
Our Native Wildflower Seed Packet Design contest Winner is: Monica Smith!
October 1, 2021[caption id="attachment_273306" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Monica Smith's winning seed packet design[/caption]
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…
A Reflection on Making Space for Us
March 7, 2021In 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…
A New Lens on Nature: Community photos in “Citizen’s Eye”
January 16, 2021It 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…
LandLab Dream Journal
October 3, 2019LandLab Dream Journal
Guest post by LandLab Artist Kate Farquhar
Editor’s Note: LandLab is the Schuylkill Center’s environmental art residency program. Kate Farquhar was named a resident artist in 2017 and recently wrapped up her project, titled Synestates. She installed a series of three sculptures on the Schuylkill Center’s trails - come visit us to see them. This blog post is Kate’s reflection on time at the Schuylkill Center and a peek into her creative process.
I'm currently wrapping up my LandLab residency at the Schuylkill Center: a chapter in my relationship to a place that I will…
NATURAL SELECTIONS: Art in the Open: Selections from 2018 at the Schuylkill Center
September 6, 2018By Christina Catanese
A mysterious, vine-woven figure recently appeared behind the Schuylkill Center’s Visitor Center building. Though lacking facial features or limbs per se, it feels human-ish and appears to gaze over the hill into the forest.
This sculpture, created by Brooklyn-based artist Anki King, was the first piece from our fall exhibition to be installed this summer. King harvested vines from the Schuylkill Center property while they were still growing strong in the height of the August growing season for maximum benefit to the ecosystem as well as pliability.
Over the next few weeks, nine more artists will install…
Elemental powers
November 2, 2017By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art and Liz Jelsomine, Exhibitions Coordinator
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.
“I imagine a line in space. I build it straight and true and offer it to the wind.
The wind plays with it like a cat with a length of yarn. The wind is the artist.”
Yellow Zinger, Tim Prentice
Tim Prentice’s Yellow Zinger was part of an…
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…
(Un)Natural Perspectives
July 6, 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.
Works were exported from the studio and given a new life outside for Out of Bounds, a show presented in collaboration with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists in 2012. From June to September that year, work was placed against the backdrop in which it was inspired by - the natural world. Some…
Artist Profile: Jane Carver
July 3, 2017
By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Imagine the quiet of a grove of tall pine trees, the impressions of your footsteps barely audible on a cushion of pine needles, punctuated by the occasional bird or creaking limb. Now, imagine the soundscape also includes an ethereal voice accompanied by the haunting notes of an accordion. You’ll have the opportunity to experience precisely these sounds this summer, as artist Jane Carver performs a special one night only concert in our Pine Grove.
Carver is a Philadelphia-based artist and musician who is part of our summer exhibition, Making in Place. She started…
How to Be Like the Glaciers Melting
January 12, 2017Guest contributor Leslie Birch, 2014-2015 LandLab Resident Artist
A few years ago I sat at my computer reading the latest on the demise of the glaciers in the Arctic. I was angry with the polluting corporations, fed up with the greed of the oil industry, disgusted by people’s consumption, and alienated by a government ruled by lobbyists. I felt frozen, as if calamity had already happened; some days I was even bleak about the future. My home thermostat was set to 69, two of my computers were on, I was surrounded by electronic parts for a project and I was…
