The Parrish's Tideland Sessions to Make Waves, Build Boats
“Water, water everywhere . . . but is it safe to drink?” If he were alive today, Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner might have told a different, less poetic story, perhaps as a speaker at “Tideland Sessions,” an all-day program of talks and performances organized in conjunction with the Parrish Art Museum’s current exhibition, “Radical Seafaring.”
Artists, writers, scientists, and historians will converge on the museum in Water Mill to consider water from a variety of perspectives on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Carl Safina, a noted ecologist who heads the Safina Center at Stony Brook University and hosts the PBS television series “Saving the Ocean,” will deliver the keynote address at 11 a.m.
“Radical Seafaring,” which will be on view through July 24, is the first museum exhibition devoted to site-specific artists’ projects carried out on the water, and several of the show’s 25 artists will participate in Saturday’s program.
From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mare Liberum, a Brooklyn artist collective devoted to the construction of viable aquatic craft as an alternative to life on land, will lead a paper boat-building project for all ages. Participants will make their own 18-inch paper dories that will be able to float once sealed. The group draws from such sources as improvised refugee boats from Senegal and Cuba, ocean-crossing rafts, and modern stitch-and-ply construction methods.
Mr. Safina, who will sign copies of his books after his talk, grew up around the coast of Long Island where, he wrote, “watching the places I loved disappear turned me into a conservationist.” He has been active in ocean conservation since the 1990s and, since then, has turned increasingly toward writing to express “my main conclusion . . . that at this this point in history, nature and human dignity require each other.”
At noon, participants can join breakout lunch discussions at one of several theme tables that will be led by representatives of regional environmental initiatives. The Southold Project in Aquaculture Training will serve complimentary oysters, farmed at the Harbor Lights Oyster Company in Southold, on the museum’s terrace.
“Something in the Water,” a discussion about water quality, will follow at 1 p.m. with Nancy N. Kelley of the Nature Conservancy on Long Island, Edwina von Gal of the Perfect Earth Project, and Mara Dias of the Surfrider Foundation.
At the 2:30 session, “What We Sea: Artists’ Views From the Water,” Courtney Leonard, an artist from the Shinnecock Nation; Mary Mattingly, whose modified houseboat WetLand will be docked at Long Wharf in Sag Harbor in June as part of the exhibition, and Mare Liberum will give 10-minute presentations on their work.
Jon Semlear, a Sag Harbor commercial fisherman, Ken Mades, a bayman from Hampton Bays, and Nancy Solomon, a folklorist, will speak at the 4 p.m. session, “Working the Waters,” followed, at 5:30, by “Blue,” a performance of storytelling and images by Constance Hockaday, a Chilean-American artist who has created maritime projects for more than 15 years.
Admission is $10 for the entire day; members, students, and children are admitted without charge.