Welcome to the TEANECK CREEK CONSERVANCY

Projects

Spring Hasu International House, Tokyo, Japan, 2007
To read more about Spring Hasu click here

Sacatar Mandala Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil, 2007

Natural Harvest Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, 2005

Growth Rings Hiroshima, Japan, 1997

Spectical Northwest Landing Beach, East Hampton, NY, 2005

Charles Elton’s prophetic 1958 book The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants defined dangers of humankind’s ignorance and disregard of the indigenous natural systems and ecology of which we are a part. Since the 1960’s a world-wide ecological art movement has developed. “Eco-artists” like Roy Staab draw creative inspiration and materials from the earth’s landscapes and ecology. As part of our cultural and educational mission, the Teaneck Creek Conservancy showcases the work of Eco-Artists who create artworks “performatively” -- that is, with support, participation from other artists, students, communities -- especially for the Conservancy.

Following is a July 21, 2004 article from the New York Times about the ecological art of Roy Staab.
Staab regularly utilizes exotic, invasive “pest” vegetation, including the “alien” reed Phragmites australis,
to create his unique and beautiful art works.

OUR TOWNS

An Artist's Masterpiece, Until the Next Storm Arrives

By PETER APPLEBOME

Cold Spring, N.Y.

ANYONE wandering along the banks of the Hudson at the northern end of Little Stony Point would be forgiven for mistaking it for an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

In the shallow water of a quiet cove across from Storm King Mountain is an ethereal structure of no apparent or conceivable utility, approximately 40 feet by 24 feet and constructed from perhaps 500 reeds. It has a base, made of the stalks of the reeds, phragmites actually, tied together with string, that looks like a smile within a bow.

It is ringed by 12-foot phragmites planted in the sand, clay and muck below, with the feathery tops waving in the soft breeze. On the shore is a weathered log with a massive rusted spike that looks as if it was placed there for the sole purpose of providing a perfect viewing space.

There are only two possible explanations for the structure's impeccable geometry and Zen-like setting - either an extraterrestrial or Roy Staab has alighted in the Hudson Valley. And given the presence of the 1971 baby blue Volkswagen bus across the road, the wise bet would be Mr. Staab, something of the Johnny Appleseed of environmental art, who for two decades has been traversing the world, constructing loops, rings, stars and Moebius strips out of reeds, willows, knotweed and maple saplings. He builds them from natural materials found at the site, works with the precision of a surgeon to make sure every detail is right and then waits for nature, in hours or days or sometimes weeks, to obliterate it and reduce it to flotsam and environmentally appropriate beach debris.

This one, created between Thursday and Sunday, and reachable by walking north along the beach toward Storm King, is the third he's created in the same spot since 1989. It is one of perhaps 100 he's done at places from Japan to Finland and from Costa Rica to Canada and all over the United States.

"People Is say, 'What does it mean? What does it mean?' " he said. "Well, I don't want to reduce it to a word: Respect nature or something. I want to set an example through the art itself.''

At 62, Mr. Staab quite adroitly pulls off the trick of seeming manic and serene at the same time. He flits about the site in a striped Guess T-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals, tweaking his work, discoursing on attributes, checking out the sun and clouds and sky and shadows like a particularly perceptive form of water fowl. But it all seems to be channeled, rather than neurotic, energy, the sort of thing that might come in handy for someone who essentially lives out of his van and supports himself more or less by being as observant about his environment as a tern.

Mr. Staab grew up in Milwaukee, with an artist for a father, and thought in fairly conventional terms when he began art school at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. But after experimenting with geometrical patterns of string on paper, he was drawn to the possibility of using phragmites in Ocracoke, N.C., in 1983.

That led him on a path that's taken him around the world and made him a minor cult figure, but not enough of one to make more than the barest living from grants and from selling photographs of his works before they're gone. And while Milwaukee remains his home base, he's a frequent visitor to New York, where he has worked in the Hamptons and up and down the Hudson and where his works are shown at ecoartspace, a nonprofit gallery in nearby Beacon.

He deals with simple, almost Jungian forms and elements. "I like things to be like a clear icon,'' he said. But he comes to each site without a preconceived idea and then decides what to do based on the materials, setting, wind, tides and light. "I come here and decide,'' he said. "It's not predesigned flopdown art."

Mr. Staab's sculpture will last only until the first storm knocks it down. But as he was photographing the piece Tuesday from one of the neighboring peaks, someone wandered out to the beach and took a swim inside it. Looking down, Mr. Staab was thrilled. "Nothing's worse than dead or static art," he said.

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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.
Twenty plates were also installed at Dix Hills Park in Huntington, NY. See: http://town.huntington.ny.us/newsdetails.cfm?id=788
See more of his projects at: http://www.richardkirkmills.com

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Lynne 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

Lynne Hull: Oasis

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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.
See Camino de Paz Labyrinths at: http://www.caminodepaz.org/artist.html

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

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Rachel Banai and students, Sarah Davol, Tim Blunk and Richard Kirk Mills:
Life in the Meadows: an exhibition of stories and artifacts from the community.
CURRENTLY ON VIEW AT THE COUNTY BUILDING, 1 BERGEN COUNTY PLAZA, HACKENSACK, NJ

A Gallery of Images From Life in the Meadows:

Ed Lofberg photograph by Rachel Banai

Steve Royka photo by Tim Blunk

Fred Anderson photograph by Richard K. Mills

Jane Paget and John Harper by R. Banai

Patti Kearns and her Mom by R. Banai

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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 mediumssuch 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 newtechnologies. 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.”

See more of Brandon's work at: http://www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-19.html

Blood Work

Parasite Specimen Case

May 6, 2006 Workshop

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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: Narrative signworks for entrances/trails

“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.”

			Eco-Art at Teaneck Creek

	Roy Staab’s artwork appears in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abington Art Center, Boreal Art/Nature (Canada), Yokohama Museum of Art (Japan), Milwaukee Art Museum, Ripon College, and Vassar College.