austen camille

Tools for Getting to Know a River:

These sculptures are tools for getting to know the river and estuary known as the Mahicannituck / Hudson. Here, you are invited to look closer, listen deeper, and start a conversation with the river.

This is a single baritone tuba that has been rearranged into a listening horn. Place your ear against the small opening and listen closely; can you hear the water? What is the river saying aloud? You may have to close your eyes in order to hear better. The language is that of birds and boats, fishes and insects, small lapping waves and strong tidal currents. With enough practice and long listening, we can learn find understanding in these languages.

This plant (Pussy willow, or Salix discolor) has been called by many names by many people. It means something different to a beaver or to a caterpillar or to a human or to a river. Look through each of the lenses to see it a little bit differently each time. Gently move leaves and branches into your view to look at them closely. Living at the edge of the water in the riparian zone, the roots of this plant hold the soil in place and filter runoff. Perhaps the river knows this plant as ‘resilience’ or ‘protector’.

The word ‘horizon’ typically refers to the boundary between earth and sky. Here, let us imagine that the water blurs this line: Now, the horizon is a place of porous exchange between the two. What if we thought of the horizon line as a relationship rather than as a dividing line? Look through the cut-outs in this piece: what do you notice? This body of water is neither one thing or another. Instead, it is a vast continuum between ocean, sky, rain, river, stream, tributary, land, home.

This project was commissioned by the Norrie Point Environmental Center in Staatsburg NY (NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation), and supported through a Submerse Grant by the NYS Water Resources Institute and MyCoast NY.