Tag: news-import
Talking with Jake Beckman about LandLab
August 28, 2014 By Guest Contributor Angel R. Graham
I had the pleasure of speaking with LandLab artist Jake Beckman over the telephone recently. Jake explained that he is enjoying being a LandLab artist. His LandLab experience allows him to engage himself more with the outdoors, he says, conning him more deeply to the land.
[pullquote]Science and art are really similar in a lot of ways. You have to imagine the unknown.[/pullquote]A.G: What inspires your indoor/outdoor art pieces?
J.B: I think the thread that ties most of them together is an interest in how things work. What are the processes that cause things to come…
Introducing #StormSnakes – A LandLab Project
August 20, 2014By LandLab Resident Artist Leslie Birch
For my LandLab residency, I’m working on the issue of storm water run-off here at the Center. Part of being a LandLab artist means working to re-mediate a problem using art, which is harder than just creating an installation that provides education. My hope is not only to have an artistic intervention, but also a scientific device to measure the amount of storm water run-off. In the past month, I’ve been in conversation with Sean Duffy, Director of Facilities, and Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art, about how the run-off from surrounding roads and…
Searching, Soaring, and Sifting with Summer Camp
August 5, 2014By Shannon Dryden, Preschool Manager and Lead Teacher
“Look, Miss Shannon, when I turn it over, I found green. What do you think that is?”
“This piece is shiny, it must be polished.”
“I can see the sparkles…it’s the schist!”
As the Preschool Summer Campers dispersed among tables filled with rocks, minerals, magnifying glasses, dishes, paintbrushes, and water, they immediately began to inquire and connected their questioning and observations with the visit from a preschool science expert on rocks. One little boy brushed both sides of his rock and was amazed as he turned it over to see the split…
Why Photography Camp?
July 24, 2014 By Elisabeth Zafiris, Manager of Public Programs
When you think about sending your child to a nature-based summer camp, you probably picture them frolicking among trees, worms, and birds, but do you see photography as a way to build a relationship with the natural world?
At the Schuylkill Center, we do. Last week we offered a nature photography camp for our eight- and nine-year-olds, culminating in their very own gallery show.
Engaging with nature through art offers a unique way to connect with the natural world, using all five senses. It’s a direct, yet play-based, experience that encourages critical thinking…
Gazing upwards to see backwards: A look at local vines and their origins
July 8, 2014By LandLab Resident Artists WE THE WEEDS, Kaitlin Pomerantz and Zya S. Levy
Look up on any summer day and your eyes are bound to come into contact with climbing, clambering vines. Clinging to treetops and fences, tumbling across buildings, these robust and intrepid climbers adventure always upwards, using structures natural and manmade to achieve great heights and lengths.
On the Schuylkill Center premises alone there are dozens of vine varieties. Natives include moonseed, wild yam, grape, green briar, and poison ivy. Even more abundant are the invasives: oriental bittersweet, mile-a-minute, Japanese honeysuckle, porcelain berry, and wisteria. Where did these…
Why does Nature Preschool love nature?
June 30, 2014
By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
At the end of our first year of Nature Preschool, the teachers, Shannon, Rebecca, and Nicole asked the children to share why they loved nature. The result? This delightful video:
http://youtu.be/Ok7T9_GCFD0
Children Need Nature is a monthly blog column from our Nature Preschool program. Read more posts here.
Summer is the season of meadows
June 26, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
To me, summer has always been the season of meadows. While in spring the light fills the forest, bringing flowers, ferns, and understory plants to life; by summer, the forest is a cool, dim respite, a darker, more peaceful place to escape the burning heat of the sun. So it is the meadow that seems to properly represent this season of blazing hot days: steaming humid afternoons, rain storms that blast out of the late afternoon and early evening to drench the world and leave things glistening and green. Meadows this time of…
Climate Change and the Two Toms
June 17, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
This piece will printed in the Roxborough Review on Thursday, June 19 in the column Natural Selections
“We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change,” Washington State Governor Jay Inslee notably says in the new TV series, Years of Living Dangerously, “and we are the last generation that can do something about it.”
Inslee gets it—climate change will be the transcendent environmental issue of the coming decades. Hard to know yet if either Governor Tom Corbett or his opponent, Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, gets it at quite this high level of…
Just how small is a toadlet?
June 9, 2014By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Just what size are these tiny toad babies that make their way, by the thousands, from the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Preserve to the Schuylkill Center each June?
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="39142,39144,39143,39145,39146"]
What’s the bbuzzz?
June 6, 2014By LandLab Resident Artists Maggie Mills, B.H. Mills, and Marguerita Hagan
Colony Collapse Disorder
The LandLab installation by Marguerita Hagan, B.H. Mills, and Maggie Mills addresses colony collapse disorder and the devastating global loss of honeybees. At present in the United States alone, 1/3 of the honeybee population has been lost to this disorder. These mini, mighty pollinators make every third bite of food we take possible. Ironically, it is human behavior that is responsible for the honeybees’ catastrophic disappearance. Our installation provides a chemical free, native pollinator garden for the bee population on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center.…
