Six Mile Creek Watershed Celebration

Last night was the opening for the Year in the Life of Six Mile Creek Project.  There was music, slide shows, art and the display of the banners I designed for the event. The banners are tightly attached to the light poles along Six Mile Creek behind the Library in Ithaca, NY.  This is an extended project that will include hikes up the watershed, poetry, music, and connections with schools and communities.

I would be interested in designing similar banners for other communities, so please let me know if you have any suggestions. The banners here are artistic interpretations of plants that live near the watershed and include the Jack In the Pulpit, Trillium, Marsh Marigold, Hellebore, and Bloodroot.

Also pictured here are creek views behind the Library and other buildings on Green Street in Ithaca, people who gathered for the event, and a map of the watersheds in this area.

Montages of Six Mile Creek Plants

My artistic bent is to play with the digital images to produce montages that are artistically pleasing to me.  The process is done in Photoshop, but can be done with any software.  It involves extracting portions of a digital image and arranging the portions on the digital canvas in Photoshop.

The Photoshop software is powerful and I feel I have just scratched the surface of the learning curve.  I find it rewarding to develop new skills each time I use Photoshop.

Here are some montages I produced from the digital images I took on my walk last week. Would love any response and opinions.

The montages below, in order of presentation, are of Blood Root, Marsh Marigold, Ferns and Skunk Cabbage, Hellebore, Jack in the Pulpit, Skunk Cabbage, and Red Trillium.

Six Mile Creek Watershed

The Six Mile Creek Watershed in Ithaca has it origins in the Caroline community and reflects much of the glaciation that was prominent in this area. It spans the very rural communities in Caroline to the very urban in the city of Ithaca, where the creek flows behind the library and eventually into the Cayuga Inlet.

I took a walk today to photograph the creek and some wildflowers.  After two hours of crawling on the ground to get some good shots, I ran out of digital space and returned home.  The photos include two types of ferns with their opening fiddle heads, Dutchman's Breeches, May Apples, and Jack in the Pulpits.