Featuring sculptures, community gatherings, performances, and an innovative role-play card game that prompts outdoor fun, Lenapehoking~Watershed: a place for water, art and culture offers multiple opportunities for the public to relax, be inspired, play, and connect at the 23 outdoor nature spaces that form the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River (AWE).
Seattle-based artist Sarah Kavage has been immersed in the fields, wetlands and woods of the Delaware watershedregion, building Water Spirit, an array of site-responsive sculpture installations created by using natural materials found in the local landscape. Water Spirit is supported by collaborations with community artists and thoughtful events rooted, literally and figuratively, in the green spaces and waterways known as Lenapehoking. “For me, the physical object is only a small part of what art is about. It is the place, its history, and human interactions that truly create it,” says Kavage.
15 Minutes/Alliance for Watershed Education
Sarah Kavage in her braided grasses, part of the Water Spirit series. Photo by 15 Minutes
Structures in Kavage’s Water Spirit series made from locally-harvested invasive phragmites reeds have cropped up around the watershed, including Portal at Gateway Park in Camden, NJ, Migration at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Eastwick/Southwest Philadelphia PA, and Al Mudhif – A Confluence at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Roxborough/Northwest Philadelphia. All installations are built with help from community members who support the creative process and once complete, serve as focal points for special events and memorable photo opportunities. Fifteen installations will be built throughout the watershed to complete the Water Spirit project. Some are documented in this video.
