Celebrate Six Mile Creek – Campus/Community Event Kicks-Off Arts-Based Watershed Initiative

Gallery Night on Friday, August 5th will feature a gala of music, dance, photography, art and water fun from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. on the downtown Creek Walk, behind the Tompkins County Library.

The event kicks off A Year in the Life of Six Mile Creek, a multi-year watershed initiative calling on the arts to invite folks of all ages to join together to protect Cayuga Lake’s waters for years to come.

The occasion will introduce Creek Walk banners of native plant images from photographer Nancy Ridenour.

Sora Jerderan Shpack, winner of Carnegie Mellon University’s prestigious Composer’s Competition, will premiere Songs of Many Waters, a multi-movement work portraying the beauty, grandeur and wonder of our world’s water systems. The work will be performed by Octavivo – The New Violin Family – with vocalists and musicians from Ithaca.

Mermaids and water fairies of all costumed ages are welcome to join Zajal the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Troupe as they premiere a new Mermaid Dance in honor of the Six Mile Creek project.

Creek enthusiasts are invited to contribute photographs and paintings for a slide and video show and exhibit featuring works by the Cayuga Nature Photographers, stone sculptor Rob Kauffman , former Cousteau filmmaker and Ithaca native David O.Brown and pleine aire artist Nari Mistry.

Photographs should be sent to ; art works and sculpture should be brought to the Creek Walk by 4 p.m on August 5th.

Sponsors

Launched with ‘seed’ funds from the Park Foundation, A Year in the Life of Six Mile Creek is spearheaded by the Level Green Institute and Cayuga Lake Watershed Network. Activities are co-hosted with members of the new Creek Coalition, a growing group of artists working with City, campus and community groups to create family-fun activities that celebrate – and document – life in, under and around the Creek through a full round of seasons.

Coalition membership is open to individuals, businesses and groups sharing its commitment to engaging the community in learning about and getting on board the importance of protecting the water so critical for our collective future.

Future Activities

A calendar of August 2011 – July 2012 Creekside activities can be found at and on Facebook, at A Year in the Life of Six Mile Creek.

One highlight of upcoming August 2011 offerings is an open Headwaters Expedition, August 19-21. Everyone is invited to explore the Creek’s meander from the Inlet to Dryden’s Hammond Hill State Forest, with music and picnics along the way.

Everyone is also invited to join in photography, history, geology and native plant walks; waterfall music, dancing, drumming, improv theatre and singing; Creekside massage and healing arts; pleine aire painting; natural stone sculpture; poetry and writing workshops; a Lifelong seminar on “Flow” with Wally Woods; and working with David Brown to video-document the Project to share online.

Starting in September, volunteers are welcome to work with Ithaca College faculty and students and the History Center to research and creating public programming for a Haudenosaunee Winter Village located in the Creek gorge nearby downtown.

Context

Known historically to the Haudenosaunee as Teegastoweas, Six Mile Creek is one of Cayuga Lake’s most important tributaries. In addition to supplying the City of Ithaca’s drinking water, it touches the lives of diverse thousands of people as it wends from the Dryden hills down through Slaterville and Brooktondale, through the Six Mile Creek nature preserve, past the downtown business district, and and through the Parkside and Northside neighborhoods before joining the Inlet.

The Creek also speaks for the many other streams that feed Cayuga Lake; and the lakes and rivers that keep our communities, nation and the planet green and thriving. Endangered by climate change, pollution and politics, scientists estimate that over 20 countries will be without potable water by 2020. Scientists and economists alike are calling the world’s water the “next gold”.

It is easy in water-rich Ithaca to ignore this larger threat. David Brown sees Ithaca as an “aquascape”, where water defines who we are and connects us across boundaries as a community. This Project’s goal is to focus attention locally, within the global context.