At the Water’s Edge: A Post-Natural Exploration of Landscape at Storm King Art Center

By Mikayla Spierer

Dec. 22, 2023

At Storm King Art Center, sculpture and landscape are intimately intertwined in an ongoing conversation between the forces that shape them and the contemporary imaginations of new and possible futures. It is said that Ted Ogden and H. Peter Stern had a vision for Storm King to be an “environmental masterpiece.” Embedded in this vision is the conflation of landscape with what is ecologically “natural” and the aesthetic sublime. Between this gap is an opportunity to think more deeply about the implication of site in a new cultural and environmental context, engaging with the land history, and offering new frameworks for a contemporary ecological relationship between Storm King and its landscape.

Over 63 years, Storm King’s landscape has evolved, broadened, and been sculpted to reflect both beauty and ecological vitality. This transformation has seen farm fields turned to meadows, gravel pits restored to grass and ponds, and steep hillsides reformed to gentle slopes. Native grasses were planted to encourage wildlife corridors, retain storm water, and trap natural carbon in the soil. The Allée revitalization replaced failing trees with varieties more suited to a warming climate.

This ongoing project is described in Storm King’s vernacular as “land reclamation.” The term has slightly different meanings depending on context and is deserving of thoughtful consideration in its continued use. Generally, land reclamation refers to the “process of improving lands to make them suitable for more intensive use.”1 In this essence the method has manifested at Storm King in projects to restore the earth stripped to gravel during the building of the New York Thruway. Improving the quality and health of the land involved restoring topsoil, introducing native grasses, and creating ponds that now harbor an ecosystem of plant and aquatic lifeforms.

 “Land reclamation” can also refer to the process of adding ground material over submerged wetlands or sea.2 On a large scale this is utilized to expand harbors or agricultural space. On a smaller scale, this method was used at Storm King to extend the landscape over segments of the creek that runs through what is now the northern parking lot. The creek, which was diverted under the land through a culvert, continues to flow despite its impermeable cover.

 The most deeply rooted etymology of the phrase requires a greater discussion of how Storm King continues to honor and acknowledge the original inhabitants of this land. Take the words apart and “land reclamation” points to a narrative of ownership anda capitalist evolution of landscape over centuries. This raises the question; how can Storm King care for the living legacy of indigenous placemaking through support of native reclaiming?

I offer the word “restoration” to inform the practices of healing and revitalization in Strom King’s ongoing relationship to the land. Considering Storm King’s newest evolution, particularly plans to “daylight” the creek in the northern parking lot, there is no better timeto collectively consider how Storm King engages with the elements of its landscape and contemporary narratives in a changing climate. What follows are thoughts on the waters that wade through Storm King and musings on a renewed attention to presence and connection amidst cycles of change.

It is essential to begin by recognizing that the name “Moodna Creek” is laced with centuries of colonial harm and violence. Originally labeled “Murderer’s Creek” by Dutch settlers, Moodna Creek is derived from a conflict that took place on its shores between a local tribe and an incursion of colonizers. The original name, bestowed by the Waoraneck Indians, a core group of Esopus Munsee, is Waoraneck (Wao-raan- nenck) Creek. This translates to “a good place for camping at the mouth of a tributary.”3 The Waoraneck, whose home territory includes land along the creek’s edge and Newburgh, were likely the first inhabitants of what is now Storm King. Calling the creek and its watershed by its Indigenous name not only disrupts cycles of violence, but also recognizes an essence ofbelonging by those whose name is steeped in its waters. The reference points we choose, and the names we call them, are all entwined in the ways we relate to where we are, and likewise, attempt to understand our place in that which is unknown.

At Storm King, we often use natural markers as a starting point to understand where we are in relationship to the surrounding landscape. It is this conversation between the ground on which we stand and the horizon ahead that defines our relationship to the physical places we live.4 The Hudson Highlands to the East and Schunnemunk Mountain to the West act as the art center’s walls, the grassy hillsides and meadows the floor, and the sky a cosmic ceiling. The horizon defines our orientation to space, delineating what is up and what lies directly ahead. The Waoraneck Creek acts as a natural boundary to Storm King’s Southeastern edge and a meandering path through the Northern woods. It is simple enough to accept these topographic cairns, but once we dive underneath the surface to understand where we are, it becomes infinitely more complex.

“…In the presence of deep water, you choose your vision; you can see the unmoving bottom or the current, the bank or infinity, just as you wish…” by Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Pp. 50

Underwater or on land, the water that makes up earth’s hydrosphere is all encompassing. In liquid form, water exists on the surfaceas rivers, lakes, oceans, and ice caps. Look below and groundwater pools in glacial aquifers and wells. Above, water mixes with air to create the vapor of clouds and fog. Both rivers and the hydrosphere are constantly in motion as water molecules interact with atmospheric conditions, cycling between material states, spatial forms, and human and geologic temporalities.

The cyclical nature of the hydrosphere is echoed in the flow of Earth’s watersheds. Comprised of hundreds of streams, a watershed, such as the one that contains the Waoraneck Creek, spatially organizes a water system that springs from small headwater streams and merges to a common point. The Waoraneck Creek Watershed covers 180 square miles of Orange County, converging in the Waoraneck Bay where it flows into the Machicanituk (Hudson) River just north of Cornwall-on-Hudson.5 From there, the river carries the water out to the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way, water evaporates, condenses, and falls back to earth where it refills the groundwater wells from which it came.

Lenape tribes conceptualized the cyclical nature of the Earth’s water systems through narrative. The chronicle, “The Turtle Discovers the World is Round”6 describes how the fox, bear, and turtle decided to learn how far they could travel before “falling off” into the waters. The fox went first, but fooled around and came back. Next the bear went out but fell asleep in a cave. Finally, the turtle traveled under the ocean and around the world, returning home. This story not only describes the world as round, but it does so by revealing an intrinsic truth; through water, all things are connected.

 Greek mythology expands this imagination further, offering the river Okeanos, which was said to flow in a circle around the entire earth. The original source of fresh water, all rivers and clouds drew from its stream, and it was believed that the sun, moon, and stars rose and set each day in its waters. Just as Lenape mythology dictates, the story of the river Okeanos illustrates the river as a cyclical force. Yet, this myth takes spatial construction and adds cosmic connection. The river is symbolized as a timekeeper, its water representing the eternal flow of time.

 The concept of “nature” is often thought of in these harmonious recurring visions and relied upon by ancient civilizations to predict the future and position their lives in relationship to the celestial bodies, shifting seasons, and tidal flows. The hydraulic loop appears to be closed; the amount of water on the earth finite and continually phasing between location and forms. However, if we expand our notion of “nature” and begin to think ecologically, as Timothy Morton suggests, the water molecules flowing through the creek are part of something much greater and undefinable; a circle that can never close. Rather than a singular loop, Morton proposes a conception of nature that is made of wavy or twisted loops nestled within one another.7 Questioning these illusions of nature, stranger relationships emerge between the forces at play in our atmosphere and the material imprint on our landscape.

 Let us imagine the Waoraneck Creek that passes through and around Storm King as a portal, or interstitial space, between our individual experience on this land and the waters that have shaped the greater Hudson Valley. Immerse yourself in the deep waters at the center of a river and you will lose sense of the tidal movement at the water’s edge. In this perceived stillness, let yourself dissolve in the understanding that in these waters, consistency and change are one in the same. The reliability of such transformation in both the environment and culture has fostered longevity and creative evolution at Storm King for decades.

 Alternatively, place your hand in the moving waters at the edge and experience what artist, Beatriz Cortez, understands as the “liminal spaces” that once again unites our conceptual reality to tangible movement.8 In this space we can understand the glacial timescale that carved the stream’s path and the geologic and human forces that continue to excavate flowing water on site. Extending your hand further, touch the water molecules passing through your fingers and experience time on an infinitely smaller scale. This is an opportunity for immediacy as molecular matter evolves through the hydraulic cycle before our eyes. Allowing ourselves to hold both truths, the realities of what can be seen and touched and the atmospheric phenomenon, which are hardly understood, is one understanding of what it means to be present and energetically engaged with “nature” at Storm King.

 It is not just the spatial imagination of the river or creek that we must ponder, but how we understand ourselves in position to these forces. The relationship between our sense of place and our proximity to the frameworks for knowledge that we create and operate within generate the “edges” that orient our relationship to art and the “natural” world. In the past, these “edges” created boundaries, as is the case with Storm King’s own relationship to the Waoraneck Creek. There are, however, far more realities to explore when dissolving the structures that delineates these borders. According to Morton, while a circle may appear constant, the edges will always deviate. In other words, the water’s edge is never absolute.

 What is the purpose of this other than naming our ecologic and cultural position in the viscous center of the Waoraneck watershed, Hudson Valley, and entire hydraulic cycle? By dissolving our limits in relationship to the environment we’ve come to know, Storm King can expand its understanding and connection to the landscapes we share.

1 Land reclamation (no date) Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/science/land-reclamation (Accessed: 15 December 2023). 

2 ‘Global Change’ (2016) in Marine ecotoxicology current knowledge and future issues. London: Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, pp. 273–313.

3 Pritchard, E. (2022) Mapping Native New York Vol one. Rosendale, NY: Evan Pritchard (Hudson Valley Highlights).

4 Whyte, D. (2021) ‘Close’, in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Many Rivers Press.

5 ‘Moodna Creek A Hudson River Tributary’ (2015) Hudson River Watershed Alliance. Hudson River Estuary Program, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, with support from the New York State Environmental Protection Fund.

6 Bierhorst, J. (1995) ‘Story Abstracts’, in Mythology of the lenape: Guide and texts. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, pp. 72.

7 Morton, T. (2022) Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 113-115.

8 Cortez, unpublished paper, August 22, 2023