Issaquah Highlands Connections
July 2014
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Heron Rookery 2014 Community Nest Making Environmental Art Project July 14-17 | Village Green Park, across from Blakely Hall In 2012, artEAST launched the Rookery Project, a multi-year community art program that pays homage to the majestic Great Blue Herons that are indigenous to our area. During the first two years, forty-one artists worked in 2-D and sculpture to bring to life their vision of the heron. This colorful and creative flock of birds roosted at a dozen exhibition sites around Issaquah and Sammamish for the enjoyment of bird watchers and art aficionados alike.
Local environmental artist Karen White facilitates community art such as nests for the Heron Rookery Project.
From the moment the project was conceived, it was artEAST’s ultimate goal to evolve the Rookery Project into a community nest-making project where the citizens become the artists. Rookery Nests 2014 will be the first environmental art installation created in our woodlandrich communities and the first site-specific art project to involve the community as the creating artists. Environmental Art is a term that has no set definition and takes many forms. One of the best known contemporary environmental artists is Andy Goldsworthy, who creates his work entirely from materials found at the immediate environmental site and then captures how the artwork responds to weather, tides and wind through photographs or film. Environmental art helps improve our relationship with the natural world or teaches us about nature and its processes or even introduces new ways for us to co-exist with our environment.
Nests will range 3 to 5 feet in diameter artEAST instructor and environmental artist Karen White will lead diverse groups from our community, including adults with the ATWORK! organization, YWCA Family Village, our own HY, and Issaquah School District’s !mpact Summer Program to build large-scale, outdoor nest art installations woven from branches collected from the community. Each nest will reflect the individual group that weaves it, the structure and story that unfolds with the building process and will remind us of community and home. The nests will range 3 to 5 feet in diameter. Karen White is a teaching artist who integrates life and art as one and loves sharing her creative processes and involving people with nature and art through stimulating and collaborative experiences. Her work emulates and highlights the patterns, textures and forms inherent in nature, celebrating its cycles and rhythms. Karen has extensive experience working with diverse communities creating large scale environmental sculptures and nests. She has led similar site-specific projects over the past eight years with US Fish & Wildlife Service, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Habitat for Humanity and Wing and Waves Birding Festival in Oregon as well as private and non-profit groups, multiple school groups, special needs and at-risk populations and community organizations in Washington, Oregon and Colorado. She currently teaches art to teens and adults at the artEAST Art Center. Nest creation will take place July 14-17 on the Village Green and the project concludes with a public showing of the nests during the July 20th, Art Outside Highlands Day Festival. Visitors to Highlands Day will also have the opportunity to work with Karen to create a nest on-site during the 4 hour festival.
Monday, July 14th
Safeway sponsors the HY (Highlands Youth Board) nest build
Tuesday, July 15th
Highlands Realty sponsors the YWCA Family Village nest build
Wednesday, July 16th
Issaquah Press sponsors the atWork! nest build
Thursday, July 17th
Highlands Dentistry sponsors the Impact! ISD middle school camp nest build
Follow the Builds on Facebook.com/issaquahhighlands
Example of Karen White’s community, environmental art, nest build with Habitat for Humanity in 2009.
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