Visiting artist project with the Eastern, Western and Central Middle Schools of Greenwich Connecticut. 2018.
Title: Meeting the Waters
Location: North Mianus River, Greenwich Point (Tod’s Point )
Target group: Middle school grade 7 (12 years old). Between 300-400 students
Date: Mid September with a completion date By Sept 30th
Artists: SPURSE (members participating: Iain Kerr, Matthew Friday)
During this collaboration, spurse worked with the middle school teachers of Greenwich to produce an extensive series of lesson plans as well as an interactive place-based project that addressed themes of land art and watershed ecology.
The world is composed of lines. The line of migration, ocean currents, wind patterns, plant growth, spread of insects, human designs, rivers meandering. Each of these is an active and dynamic line being pushed into form by multiple forces (other lines) acting upon it.
This project is an opportunity to make a large drawing by feeling these lines shaping us as a line. We will do this in two projects: (1) Wind & Tides on a beach, and (2) River Being on the Mianus River.
Wind and Tides
We will work collectively — becoming a line (by all holding onto a rope), that is then moved by the force of the wind, waves, beach (each a type of line). Once we have been moved into a new line we will dig this into a shallow trench to mark it temporarily on the beach.
River Being
Here we will disperse and join the line of the river and all that is swept along with it. Each of you will make a biodegradable paper airplane, add seeds from riparian buffer plants to it, and walk to a unique place along the river and launch your plane. The seeds will drift along the line of the river, settling onto river banks to grow into a verdant ecology that will prevent erosion.
This project was funded by The Developing Artist Program In Conjunction with a grant from Greenwich Alliance for Education, additional funding awarded by the Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts, which also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Video documentation of this event is available here.
