Tag: news-import
Call for Art: Community
December 8, 2016Jenny Ryder, Environmental Art & PR Intern
With the dawn of a new year approaching, it’s as good a time as ever to commit or re-commit yourself to new year resolutions and opportunities for the future.
At the Schuylkill Center, we are committed to using our various platforms and resources to help inspire meaningful connections between people and nature—whether that be through our Nature Preschool, here on the blog, in our gallery, or just a simple retweet. As we renew our commitment to the planet and our ecosystem this year, we must necessarily renew our commitment to all of those…
Field Guide: Fallen Leaves
November 23, 2016By Jenny Ryder, Environmental Art and PR Intern
Enjoy our mobile field guide as you walk, hike and play in the fall forests. Take in the beauty of crunchy fallen leaves in the city and the forest and easily identify the trees from whence they came.
See other Field Guide posts here.
Tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera)
Tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera), commonly referred to as Tulip Poplar, are abundant in the forest at the Schuylkill Center, and their mostly-yellow turning leaves roughly resemble the shape of a cat’s head or—as you might have noticed—a tulip! Another mark of a Tulip tree leaf…
Climate Change: Making the Global Personal Through Art
November 3, 2016 By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
What does climate change mean for Philadelphia? As a large, complex, global process, it’s not an easy concept to wrap our minds around.
As you might expect, climate models project pretty clearly that Philly will face a future that is hotter and wetter.
According to CUSP – the Climate & Urban Systems Partnership , scientists predict that in our region we could experience as many as three additional weeks of days over 90° by the 2020s. All that heat not only is unpleasant, but can also lead to serious health risks. CUSP also…
All about our staff vegan challenge
November 3, 2016By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Michelle Wilson’s Carbon Corpus, in our fall gallery show Going Up, explores food and carbon – for this conceptual art piece Wilson ate vegan for each week that participants sponsored, essentially selling credits for the carbon saved by eating vegan (estimate at 35 kg of carbon per week of veganism).
Inspired by this, eight of our staff gave veganism a try. Here, they reflect on learning to eat without animal products for a week.
Emily, Public Programs Coordinator
Having been vegetarian in the past, I was not at all worried about missing meat. …
Children Need Nature: Getting Ready for Kindergarten
October 28, 2016By Shannon Wise, Nature Preschool Manager
Children Need Nature is a monthly blog column from our Nature Preschool program. Read more posts here.
If you walk along the trails with a Nature Preschool class, you might think you are just out for a breath of fresh air, to run and let go of some extra energy. Yes – it is that and so much more. You might notice children gathering leaves, counting as they go. Their teacher furthers the experience as she takes out four-colored pieces of construction paper to allow the children to sort by shades of fall. Soon, the children…
Field Guide: Fall in Bloom
October 20, 2016By Jenny Ryder, Environmental Art and Public Relations Intern
Enjoy our mobile field guide as you walk, hike, and play in the fall meadows. See other Field Guide posts here.
Flat-top goldenrod (Solidage graminifolia)
Flat-top goldenrod provides nectar for many types of pollinators such as butterflies, wasps, both long- and short-tongue bees, flies, moths and beetles. One particularly interested beetle is named after the plant itself—the Goldenrod Soldier Beetle! Many people mistakenly believe they’re allergic to goldenrod , but in fact, what little pollen it has is too sticky to be blown around by the wind! Wherever you are, it…
Introducing Carole Williams-Green
October 18, 2016By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
On November 17, the Schuylkill Center presents the 11th annual Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award, given to leaders who reflect the spirit and vision of Schuylkill Center founder Henry Meigs.
This year, we honor Carole Williams-Green, the dynamic founder of the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center in West Philadelphia. A former public school teacher and administrator, she has led a successful multi-decade effort to rehabilitate the historic but abandoned Fairmount Park Police stables in Fairmount Park’s Cobbs Creek section, creating a center to bring environmental education to under-served neighborhoods like her own West Philadelphia. …
Art + Time at the Schuylkill Center: a 2017 wall calendar
October 13, 2016By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
One of the most important aspects of environmental art is leaving time for nature to respond to an art work. Change is a constant in the natural world, and when artists venture outside the controlled setting of the studio or gallery, art must be responsive to change, time, and seasons.
Indeed, many environmental art works are not complete until nature has had time to respond and artists have had time to understand and reconcile change in the work. Stacy Levy’s Rain Yard needs rain to fall for the collaboration with water to happen;…
Children Need Nature: What is a Nature Preschooler?
September 30, 2016By Nicole Brin, Sycamore Classroom Lead Teacher
Children Need Nature is a monthly blog column from our Nature Preschool program. Read more posts here.
A Nature Preschooler is a 3-, 4-, or 5-year-old child who is part of a program which uses the natural world as the primary context for learning. They develop the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical skills needed for Kindergarten while immersed in daily outdoor experiences.
But a Nature Preschooler is more than that...
A Nature Preschooler is curious. Learning the value in discovering answers for themselves. Studying the movement of a snail up close, wondering why some leaves turn…
Reading Under the Bark
September 20, 2016By guest contributor Jim Frazer
I’ve been trying to remember what led me to photograph the engraved tracks of bark beetles. I believe that really it was just curiosity about looking for lines and patterns in nature which first drew my attention to the etched pathways of the beetle larvae. Once I became aware of them, they seemed to be everywhere in the woods. In an effort to understand what I was looking at, I did some research, and found out that the beetles’ increased range and activity was due to warming.
Since climate change seemed to come on us…
