 |
|
|
|
| By:Ilene Dube, TIMEOFF | 01/20/2006 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In
"Leaving the Marsh," Madelaine Shellaby paints native birds
that will leave if efforts are not taken to preserve the
Hamilton-Trenton Marsh.
|
|
Two winters ago, Carolyn Foote Edelmann rousted a group of friends and colleagues during the wee hours to traipse through the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh. "It was 2 degrees," recalls Mary Leck, Rider University biology professor emeritus and ardent supporter of the Marsh, who co-guided the tour that frigid morning. But Ms. Edelmann's enthusiasm knows no bounds.
What treasures awaited those who turned out! The 1,250-acre tidal marsh between Trenton, Hamilton and Bordentown hosts more than 230 bird and 550 plant species, including wild rice, according to Ms. Edelmann, a writer, nature activist and former member of Friends for the Marsh. Throughout the seasons, Ms. Leck and her husband, Charles, Rutgers professor emeritus, lead walks for the Audubon Society, Sierra Club and D&R Greenway, pointing out everything from Joe Pyeweed and river birch to a great horned owl and bald eagle.
In order to bring greater awareness to this ecological treasure along the Delaware River, Ms. Edelmann enlisted the help of the Princeton Artists Alliance. Ms. Edelmann is a long-time friend and supporter of PAA, and collectively they pitched the idea to Kate Somers, curator of The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb. With its lake, goose crossings, walking trails and spacious light-filled gallery looking out on the lake, the Lawrence headquarters is the ideal setting for an exhibit celebrating the natural world. "And hosting this exhibit shows just how ecologically sensitive the pharmaceutical company is," says Ms. Edelmann.
Princeton Artists Alliance was founded in 1989 by Charles McVicker and is today made up of 23 Princeton-area artists. Perhaps the group's most ambitious show was The Odyssey, also at The Gallery at BMS, in 1999. That show, in which the artists responded to Robert Fagle's translation of the Homeric epic, traveled to four other galleries in the state. Last year, PAA teamed up with poets at the New Jersey State Museum for the exhibit Visions and Voice.
Only two of the PAA members — Lucy McVicker and photographer Clem Fiori — had ever been to the Marsh before this project, so Ms. Leck led about six or seven walks to help the artists learn about the flora and fauna. Ms. Leck first became involved with the Marsh in the mid-1970s, researching seed germination ecology. "It's an important educational resource," she says. "The more people look at the Marsh, the more promise there is for its preservation."
So about a year ago, curator Kate Somers found herself at the helm of a project involving 23 artists. "It could have been a nightmare, but they were wonderful to work with, so good about meeting deadlines," she says. "I am thrilled to see what I consider some of the best work of these artists' careers. A lot of the artists pushed themselves this time with different materials."
Madelaine Shellaby, for example, an art teacher at Stuart Country Day School, is known for her digital photography, as seen in recent exhibits at Artworks and the Witherspoon Gallery in Princeton. Here, she has contributed an oil painting and an art book.
"I love to paint, needed a good subject at the right time, and found one with beauty, intrigue and quiet loss," she says. "Also, since everyone is going digital these days, including a good many artists for this show, I wanted to do something else."
Her very large painting, "Leaving the Marsh," gives flight to birds that inhabit the Marsh: a swan, an owl, an osprey, a heron, an eagle, a red-winged blackbird, a sparrow and a seagull.
"I am intrigued by biographies of Audubon that describe the incredible numbers of birds that lived at that time, and how the number and species have declined since then," she says. "The bird population will continue to decline if we allow trash to wash down storm drains into the Marsh, and build sewage treatment plants there and build extensive roadways over and around it.
"The notion of extinction is what I was thinking of when I titled my painting 'Leaving the Marsh' — hence the darkness towards which they are flying," she continues. "I almost titled it 'Odd Flock,' because of course in nature these different birds would not fly together. Hopefully, attention that is once again being paid to the Marsh, via Mary Leck and others, might indeed have some favorable effect on the habitat."
The accordion-folded book, Bonaparte in Bordentown: Earlier Times in the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh, tells the story of how Napoleon's brother, Joseph, came to the U.S. after the family was banished from France and built a group of houses overlooking the Bordentown bluffs. It uses digitally printed, crisp photos showing natural vistas in the Marsh against a sewage waste drain, gum wrappers, rusting car parts, a cyclone fence.
"Books have been my main focus recently," says Ms. Shellaby. "I started making them on my desktop printer, then several years ago printed pages on a letterpress and tipped in archival prints of photographs I had taken."
In fact, it was Ms. Edelmann who first told Ms. Shellaby about Bonaparte in Bordentown. Ms. Shellaby then went on to research it and put it in her own voice.
Rajie Cook, a Bucks County, Pa., artist who received the Presidential Award for Design Excellence for his universal signs, considers the relationship of nature to art. He quotes Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his artist's statement for the catalog: "It is the fashion to talk as if art were a sort of addition to nature, with power to perfect what nature has begun or correct her when going aside. In truth, man has no power over nature except that of motion — the power of putting natural bodies together or separating them; nature performs all the rest within herself."
For "Sylvan Soliloquy," Mr. Cook uses an enormous slice of a tree trunk, hollowed out with age, cracked by years of expansion and contraction, filled with dozens of smaller logs. At its center is another hollowed out log, in which a doll's face rests in a nest.
Photographer Clem Fiori juxtaposes industry (a bridge carrying trucks over the Delaware River, transmission towers) with history (carvings in a tree trunk), the man-made (a stone tunnel entrance) and nature (tree roots, leaves and moss).
"The Marsh is earth and sky, roots and vegetation," writes watercolorist Nancy Kern in the catalog.
"This tidal marsh — where dragonflies love to lay their eggs, where the fish hide out in the pickerel weed, and where fertile plants that grow there feed fish in the Delaware Bay — is a truly fragile environment, an environment in which every species is dependent on another for its survival," writes Lucy Graves McVicker. She uses acrylic, rice papers, colored pencils, twine and marsh reeds to show the "Fragile Connections" at daybreak, noon, dusk and nightfall.
Pat Martin and Tina Salvesen have teamed up to create "The Wetlands," an assemblage made of old bottles, crushed soda cans, a golf ball, a doll's arm, a comb, a toy wheel and seed pods melted into a sea of pollution.
"Everyone brought their own experiences and view to the shapes and textures of trees, colors of flowers, and you come away with a different feeling for it," says Ms. Leck. "It's a remarkable celebration of the Marsh."
When Ms. Edelmann saw all the artwork lying on the floor of the gallery before it was hung, and got down on her knees to inspect it, her eyes swelled, she says. "Without that vision given to the Marsh, none of those artworks would have happened. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and it's wonderful."
Marsh Meditations, an exhibit of the Princeton Artists Alliance responses to the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh curated by Kate Somers, is on view at The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Route 206, Lawrence, through March 26. Gallery hours: Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 1-5 p.m. For information, call (609) 252-6275. Hamilton-Trenton Marsh on the Web: www.marsh-friends.org