EVENT PREVIEW
Wilderness Act Performance Series.
West Atlanta Watershed Alliance/Outdoor Activity Center. Music by composers Nicole Chamberlain and Thomas Avery, played by resident ensemble Chamber Cartel. Poetry by Marti Keller and art by Kris Pilcher and Mollie Taylor. 3-5 p.m. Sept. 28. Free. 1442 Richland Road, Atlanta. 404-752-5385 www.wawaonline.blogspot.com/p/outdoor-activity-center.html
Davidson-Arabia Mountain Preserve. Music by composers Myles Brown and Connor Way, played by Chamber Cartel. Poetry by Abi Konnic, photography by Simon Salt and visual art by Janna Dudley. 4-7 p.m. Oct. 5. Free. 3350 Klondike Road, Lithonia 404-998-8384, www.arabiaalliance.org/explore
Chattahoochee Nature Center. Music by composers Sarah Hersh, Nathan Bales and Stephen Wood, played by Clarinets for Conservation. Photography by Eric Bowles and poetry by Peter Peteet. Noon-3 p.m. Oct. 12. $10. 9135 Willeo Road, Roswell. 770-992-2055. www.chattnaturecenter.org
For details, visit www.wildernessactperformanceseries.com
Stephen Wood paddled his kayak slowly through the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, propelling it through the dark water. As he looked up, he saw an adult alligator longer than the kayak heading straight toward him. The two creatures passed each other quietly.
Later, as he stopped and looked around, holding still with his paddle, he noticed a tiny red plant, with five “paws” extending just an inch or so above the surface of the water. It was a sundew, also known as a Drosera, which has a sticky bubble of “dew” catching the light on each leaf.
Wood spent two nights camped alone on one of the wooden platforms in this southeast Georgia swamp, feeling the silence, the peace and the vitality surrounding him.
When he returned to Atlanta, he composed a musical piece for the small sundew, a carnivorous plant dotting the Okefenokee, whose bright tentacles close like a hand around flies and other insects.
Called “Drosera: The Morning Dew of the Sun,” the piece will premiere Oct. 12 at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, played by the resident ensemble Clarinets for Conservation.
Wood is a composer of modern jazz and chamber experimental music. He’s one of 23 artists who have made forays into wilderness areas and created music, poetry, paintings, photos and other art in response to their experience.
It’s part of the Wilderness Act Performance Series, which began Sept. 14 and extends through Oct. 12 in Atlanta, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the law that preserves more than 9 million acres of wilderness in the United States.
Wood, who organized the series, did a week-long artist residency in the Okefenokee in March, the first such residency the refuge has hosted. The other artists attended three-day field seminars at nature preserves in Atlanta this summer, where naturalists, arborists, historians and wildlife experts provided information about the areas and their ecosystems.
The five performances in the series take place at each of the five centers where the artists studied.
The muse in the forest
Edie Morton, a visual artist, attended a field seminar along with two composers and a poet at Woodlands Garden near downtown Decatur. There they learned the history of the 7-acre sanctuary and soaked up the feel of this Georgia Piedmont forest, similar to the forests that existed before European settlement.
To Morton, the experience underscored the importance of heightened sensitivity. She believes a deeper connection to nature imparts wisdom and enhances intuition.
Her paintings and mobiles are filled with the patterns and shapes of leaves, bark, seedpods, wings and nests.
For the Wilderness Act Performance Series, she created three “floating garden” mobiles of beeswax-coated paper petals, which she presented at Woodlands Garden in the second event of the series.
Poet Peter Peteet, joined a photographer and two composers for seminars at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, in Roswell. Canoeing along the river, he observed the uneasy relationship between the wild and the urban, apparent in the graffiti painted on rock walls and the silt piling up in the water. He will read his prose poems about the human need for wilderness at the final event Oct. 12 at the Chattahoochee Nature Center.
The one field seminar not held at a wilderness preserve was at Shambhala Tibetan Meditation Center in Decatur, attended by visual artist Janna Dudley, along another artist and a composer.
The one field seminar not held at a wilderness preserve was at Shambhala Tibetan Meditation Center in Decatur, attended by visual artists Julie Henry and Janna Dudley and a composer and a poet.
The group practiced meditation and later went to Cascade Springs Nature Preserve, a 130-acre urban forest in southwest Atlanta.“We were encouraged to do aimless wandering,” Henry said. The total experience was about exploring “the wilderness in our minds,” she said.
In response to the experience, Dudley created a cut-paper sculpture of large white dandelion that echoes the tradition of Buddhist prayer flags, which carry prayers out into the world on the wind.
“Wilderness is seen as a pesky weed, as something to control,” she said. But weeds like dandelion find a way to survive. Her work will be presented Oct. 5 at Davidson-Arabia Mountain Preserve.
Knowing your place
In modern urban society, technology keeps us comfortable and provides constant entertainment, said Wood. People don’t come face-to-face with themselves often enough in this context. That’s why wilderness is so vital.
His encounter with the alligator was a symbolic one.
“That experience is important because I was no longer at the top of the food chain,” he realized.
In that moment, he had a wider view of the human place in the universe.
He also believes he would not have seen the sundew plant had he not opened himself to wider observation.
“I saw it because I stopped, slowed down and allowed myself to see,” Wood said.
The sundew is a plant that evolved into a carnivore in response to the difficult swamp environment.
It became the genesis of his composition because it had a “singular singing voice,” he said. And to him, it expressed joy.
