Welcome to the TEANECK CREEK CONSERVANCY

Current and Past Projects

Meant as a celebratory twist on tree labeling, these zinc etching plates give voice to the highly active nature of our trees. “So often people tend to overlook trees, taking their obvious rootedness as passivity, when trees are really super-active: engaged in purifying air, cycling countless gallons of water and contributing in fundamental ways to life on earth both physically, spiritually and to our emotional well being.”

Rick wanted a collaborative project that could involve his Long Island University printmaking students along with local students. The project at the Conservancy involved more than 80 fourth graders in Dolly Bohnert's art classes at Hawthorne Elementary School in Teaneck. The children did research on the tree species on site and made the artwork that was transferred onto photo-etching plates at the C. W. Post Printmaking Workshop at LIU More than 31 plates will be installed during the Spring of 2006 and will serve as a focal point for walks and talks about the changing nature of tree species at the Conservancy. . “As trees are our oldest living earth-companions they have tended to pick up a lot of history and associated stories”, Rick points out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lynn Hull: Migration Mileposts

“Migration Mileposts link communities from Canada to South America through our shared wildlife:
migrating birds that use the Atlantic flyway.

I believe that the creativity of artists can be applied to real world problems and can have an effect on
urgent social and environmental issues. My sculpture and installations provide shelter, food, water or
space for wildlife, as eco-atonement for their loss of habitat to human encroachment.
Research and consultation are essential to project success. I prefer direct collaboration with wildlife
specialists, environmental interpreters, landscape architects, and local people for design integration.

At Teaneck Creek Park, “NJ Rubblestone”, (a.k.a.hunks of discarded highway concrete) has been recycled through sandblasted stencils which tell of the travels of eight bird species observed here. With
“Oasis” branches were used to create resting and observation perches for birds at a freshwater pond.
Many thanks to all the volunteers who truly did some very heavy lifting.
” Visit Lynne’s website at www.eco-art.org

Ariane Burgess and the local community : Labyrinth

Begun in 2003 and completed in 2004, Ariane Burgess of Camino de Paz worked with hundreds of volunteers, families and community groups to build this oasis of peace and contemplation at the disturbed heart of the Conservancy's lands. Ariane was invited and supported by the Puffin Foundation and the Rosenstein family. Ms. Burgess with artist-in-residence Richard Mills truly divined the location for this work. Walking through the overgrown and heavily shaded wetland forest, they saw light coming through a circular clearing in the canopy. Investigating further they came upon a rubble and invasive vine covered clearing in the woods aflutter with cabbage white butterflies. Ariane knew this was the place, the heart of the Conservancy lands that truly expressed the genius of the place - the genius loci. And so with extraordinary labor from the community - moving hundreds of dumped pieces of heavy highway concrete (NJ rubblestone!) - began the process of paying homage to the Lenape presence and the spirit of healing and renewal that the Conservancy has dedicated itself to. "The place where nature, history and art come full circle." Come walk the Labyrinth for yourself.

The Opening

To the Labyrinth

Ariane Burgess with Blair Hines

The First Stones

Building from the center outward

Ariane the Scot hefts a stone

Laying the loops

Fall visitors

May 7 2004 opening day

Labyrinth Glyph entrance marker

Walking the Labyrinth

Entrance sign

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life in the Meadows: an exhibition of stories and artifacts from the community.
With Rachel Banai and students, Sarah Davol, Tim Blunk and Richard Kirk Mills.

A Gallery of Images From Life in the Meadows:

Ed Lofberg photograph by Rachel Banai

Fred Anderson photograph by Richard K. Mills

Jane Paget and John Harper by R. Banai

Patti Kearns and her Mom by R. Banai

Brandon Ballengee: Various Projects and Workshops

Love Motel

In May 2006, Brandon Ballengée created this temporary outdoor installation at the Puffin Gallery using ultra-violet (black) light to study and photograph arthropods (spiders, moths, beetles, etc.) and other nocturnal creatures. Attracted to the light, these creatures will mate and feed on the sculpture. Moths will release chemical pheromones to attract mates and consequently "paint" the piece, while spiders will spin webs adding their own contribution to the work. This ongoing series of sculptures previously has been created from 2001 through the present in Asia, Central America, Europe, and North America, including at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

“Deconstructing the boundaries between art and science, I create conceptual installations out of information generated from ecological field trips and laboratory research. My actions as an artist conducting primary scientific research are both performative and an extension of the notion of artistic investigation. From my own obsessive curiosity and a profound desire to make art, I create works that are physically involved and saturated with data. By employing complex visual strategies with unearthed content, I attempt to challenge viewers intellectually and aesthetically. Diverse mediums such as drawings, preserved specimens, projected digital animation and interactive web sites are utilized to express the genetic complexity and variance of the life-forms found within nature, as well as those engineered via new technologies. By exhibiting unusual materials such as collected living plants and animals in installations, I strive to re-examine the context of the museum/exhibition space from a static sterile environment into a more organic system reflecting the inherent chaos found within evolutionary processes. Exploring the organic processes of life, I have bred multiple generations of a species to induce aesthetic variation in offspring- creating living “artworks” which expand the use of artistic materials to include actual genes.”

Blood Work

Parasite Specimen Case

May 6, 2006 Workshop

Ursula Clark: Arbor

The artist named the sculpture “Arbor” as an invitation to the surrounding forest -- part of the extensive freshwater forested wetlands of the Teaneck Creek Conservancy -- and the forest preservation and stewardship concepts that are embodied in “Arbor Day.” The artist’s conception of the sculpture included an image of children planting and caring for trees during an Arbor Day event.

The artist’s intention for the piecewas to create a resting place for eco-park visitors that would provide shelter and shade, and foster contemplation. Ms. Clark, who was assisted by fine arts students from Fairleigh Dickinson University, arranged the materials “to create a space people enter into, pass through, and become part of as elements of nature themselves. Human beings cannot be separated from nature.”

Ms. Clark creates site specific environmental sculpture. For “Arbor,” she created the sculpture entirely from materials she found at the Conservancy. She states that “The goal is to create from these collected elements a space yet unknown. That is the excitement of the journey.”

Richard Kirk Mills: Artist-in-residence Narrative Signworks

Valentina DuBasky: Heron Glyph

“The Heron Earthwork was inspired by research on geoglyphs: the images created on
entire landscapes by ancient people. The Heron Earthwork is a site-specific artwork celebrating
the Herons and water birds that migrate each year along the Atlantic Flyway. Created entirely out of
recycled and natural materials found in the Teaneck Creek Conservancy, The Heron Earthwork is an
homage to the migrating birds of the Eastern Seaboard, a meditation on time and place, and a
celebration of our brief interactions with these ancient messengers. The Heron Earthwork occupies
an overlap between human imagination, the forces of weather, and the passage of time as seen in
the changing cycles of nature. The artwork will maintain a sympathetic contact with the natural world
through growth, stasis, and decay.Working with nature instinctively and collaboratively, I wish to thank
the local community volunteers who helped install the Heron.”

“I play a game with my five year old son. We use sticks to mark a one foot square on the ground then
we count the things going on in that square. We count bugs and plants and evidence of otherbugs,
plants and animals that have passed through. The Teaneck Creek Park as a small nature preserve,
makes it an ideal site for witnessing human interaction with “nature” and for noticing the network of
connections between things natural and un-natural, native and invasive, pastand present. It is to the
planet what the one square foot is to our little homestead.

At every bend and obstruction in the Creek, a collection forms, consisting of plant and tree
detritus and all manner of human litter. I see the Creek and all of the tributaries as symbolic of the
passage of time. The sculptures I’ve created for the park are made from these collections of creek refuse.
They are animal forms suggesting the emergence of new life from this abused environment. Each creature
is formed from things that served some purpose(a soda bottle, a broom, a leaf, a stick), and were then
cast off. Like a park that was once a dump that was once a wetland wilderness, my animals raise the
questions: what will survive our incessant alteration of nature and what aspects of us will flourish in
this altered world.”