Studio I

The focus of this foundation studio is to explore ways of recording and representing landscape - with an emphasis on material, space, rhythm and measure - through a range of drawings and constructions. The studio attempts to create a sensibility toward landscape where the act of surveying a site is as much an imaginative endeavor as is the crafting of an artifact or the construction of a path in a landscape. Emphasis is placed on visual and manual skills in two-dimensional and three-dimensional constructions (drawing, fabrications, model-making, etc.), while developing ways to "see" landscape. The studio is structured around the themes of wetness/dryness and enclosure/disclosure, and works with one or more sites in the Philadelphia region. In the past, the studio has focused on a territory around Martha's Furnace in the Pine Barrens, NJ; a part of the Meadowlands in northern NJ; an anthracite strip-mine in part of Pennsylvania's Appalachian Mountains; the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River Trail in Philadelphia; and Great Falls in Paterson, NJ. Most recently, the studio has focused on a stretch of East Fairmount Park near the Brewerytown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Projects involve the making of pathways in these otherwise undesigned environments.