Beginnings
At Petty's Island, Camden, NJ
Photo credit: Sarah Kavage
Artist: Sarah Kavage
Project: Water Spirit
Completed: April 2021
Assistants: Adriana Amador-Chacon, Priscilla Rios, Monica Perez Reyes
Carpentry: Robert Zverina
Community Liaisons: Jose Ortiz Pagan, Priscilla Bell
Special thanks to: Jack McCrossin, Cari Wild, Martin Rapp
About
Beginnings is an ecological sculpture that you can sit on, built with invasive Phragmites reed harvested on site and using traditional European roof thatching methods (Phragmites is commonly used for roof thatching in Europe). This trio of benches is exuberant in its form, echoing the new growth of spring and hope for the next phase of Petty’s Island after decades of industrial use. These benches provide a space to contemplate the history of human activity on the island, sense below surface appearances, and dream a path forward that is healing and hopeful without erasing the past.
Accessibility info
Access to Petty’s Island is limited to scheduled programming as the site undergoes environmental remediation. The sculpture is located along an unpaved trail along the southeast shore of the island, about ¼ mile from the access road.
From the Artist
"This trio of benches, at Petty’s Island in New Jersey is the first of a number of installations made with Phragmites - an invasive reed that is now a prominent feature of wetlands in the east and midwest.
Crews of volunteers harvested the phrag at the end of the pre-pandemic days (Jan 2020) back when I thought I’d be spending most of 2020 in Lenapehoking. Now here we are, re-emerging after a year plus on pause. Petty’s Island is also experiencing a re-emergence from decades of use as an oil and shipping terminal...40 huge oil tanks gone. A 50 acre parking lot turned into a meadow. Environmental cleanup happening to make the site accessible as a large public park.
When I first started spending time in Philly it was hard to read the landscape, buried as it is under 400 years of colonization and development. Petty’s Island, damaged as it may be, is a small window into the original landscape of Lenapehoking. It has persisted through centuries and is now on the precipice of its next chapter. I wanted to offer a place to think about hope and rebirth...not an election sign version of hope but one that recognizes the labor and struggle that you sometimes have to go through to find it. The hope of plants that have survived a long winter."
— Sarah Kavage
Gallery
Photo credit: Sarah Kavage
