“ST. MICHAELS FARM PATH”: This piece by Lucy Kalian is among the works on display at the D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center as part of the “Eternal Beauty, Perpetual Green” exhibit.

D&R Greenway Land Trust presents Eternal Beauty, Perpetual Green: Preserves through the Seasons at the Johnson Education Center, 1 Preservation Place in Princeton until June 16, with a reception on Friday, April 28 from 5:30–7:30 p.m.; light refreshments will be served. RSVP by (609) 924-4646 or rsvp@drgreenway.org. The artists in this exhibit celebrate the beauty of preservation with many works depicting D&R Greenway preserves throughout the year. Also on view in the Olivia Rainbow Gallery is Eden/Habitat: Celebrating April as Autism Awareness Month. In this exhibit, Eden Autism students share creative views of their campus, through May 12. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, visit www.drgreenway.org. 

“For some things there are no wrong seasons,” wrote the poet Mary Oliver. “Which is what I dream of for me.” Throughout all the seasons, these seven artists have taken paint and brush, preserving dreamlike landscapes on canvas as D&R Greenway saves land for life. “The detail of the work in this exhibit evokes art not just as the memory or documentation of beautiful preserves, but as a process that forms memories and captures feelings,” says Curator Diana Moore. “Vivid and complex, the appreciation of nature is felt in every brush stroke.”

Bob Barish is a board member of Artsbridge, the art association located in Stockton, and serves as coordinator for the River Rats Plein Air Painting Group, where he selects a weekly painting location in the surrounding Delaware Valley area, including D&R Greenway preserves.

Agnes Denes is a world-renowned conceptual artist and a pioneer of ecological art with a focus on science and art. Her work on view at D&R Greenway is a signed archival print of a digital rendering of the original design drawing for one of her boldest public ecological artworks, “Tree Mountain — A Living Time Capsule — 11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years,” 1992-1996, in Ylöjärvi, Finland.

Lora Durr’s Chester County landscapes show the many shades of green in spring, the intensity of nature’s colors in summer, autumn in a meadow under a blue sky, the starkness of a winter day, as well as goats in the landscape.

Lucy Kalian, along with woodturner Bruce Perlmutter and sculptor Stella Ryan, have created a collection of images that become “witnesses,” all done on D&R preserves over a year. “Creating a work of art is an exploration,” Kalian says. “It may begin as a passing thought or observation that encourages deeper investigation. It may be an unraveling of an internal or peripheral knot. Always, a story unfolds.” Sometimes the story is left on a tree after visitation from woodpeckers and the insects they hunger after; her stories route us through the Sourland Mountains, down a winding path at St. Michaels Farm Preserve.

Mary M. Michaels, often sighted at D&R Greenway events, creates small-scale landscape paintings in pastels that concentrate on vistas permanently set aside as open space for future generations, including: Carson Road Woods, St. Michaels Farm Preserve, Rosedale Lake, the Institute Woods, and Greenway Meadows Park, home to D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center.

Speaking of the exhibit, D&R Greenway President and CEO Linda Mead says, “Art and land create a natural partnership. Having just returned from Italy, where the landscape inspired Renaissance painters, I have grown an even greater appreciation for the legacy of this art that immortalizes the places that D&R Greenway has protected.

“Through art,” Mead continues, “decades from now people will continue to experience these landscapes on the canvas, and be inspired to visit these lands that have been preserved forevermore.”

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