The waterfall…at once presents to the mind the beautiful, but apparently incongruous idea, of fixedness and motion - a single existence in which we perceive unceasing change and everlasting duration. The waterfall may be called the voice of the landscape, for, unlike the rocks and woods which offer sounds as the passive instruments played upon by the elements, the waterfall strikes its own chords, and rocks and mountains reecho in rich unison…

THOMAS COLE - from one of his notebooks

 

KAATERSKILL FALLS, the Clove and the surrounding areas served as the creative wellspring for the first indigenous school of American painting, and was inspirational to early American literature and philosophy.


These lands were held to be sacred grounds by Native Americans and KAATERSKILL FALLS was believed to be the resting place of the Creator and was known as the Great Wall of Manitou.


This site, outside of Catskill, New York lies within the first public land in the United States set aside for the use of future generations. "FOREVER WILD," the New York State Constitutional Amendment, which predates the National Parks System, created the CATSKILL and ADIRONDACK Preserves and saved these lands from further development.


The spirituality of the 19th Century transcendentalism, with its God-like belief in the ecology of nature over the material world, provides an interesting counterpoint to the ecological nightmare of the 21th Century. It would appear that the messy by-product of our ever-increasingly materialistic choices provide the very seeds to the continuing bankruptcy of our spiritual ecology. The inherent dangers seem to be fed by our ability to ignore the harming of nature itself, as well as the damage we inflict upon ourselves.

The cost of this resulting loss
will far outstrip that of any other...

INSTALLATION OVERVIEW

& PROJECT STATEMENT