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Concept Art: Austen’s proposed project, A Habitat / A Home, will ask viewers to consider the park as a shared environment.
Concept art: Located at the north entrance to the boardwalk, Cane Break Basket will be a metal sculpture showing a switch cane plant arcing from its location in the marsh over the boardwalk and into a basket weave. Austen plans to collaborate with an indigenous artist mentee to create the patterns and finalize the design of this piece.
Concept art: Bird Boardwalk proposes structures with ceramic & metal bird heads. Some will be at human height, where people can put their heads in and look out at the marsh through the birds' eyes, while others may be much taller. These could be located at the apex of the boardwalk.
Concept art: Bat View consists of a metal inverted tree hollow, with an equilateral prism installed in a welded frame. When you look through the prism, the landscape is inverted and the viewer is able to experience an upside-down roosting habitat for bats.
Concept art: Spotted Salamander Leaves features metal and plexiglass leaves, large enough for kids to play under. The plexiglass inserts will be colored, so as to cast spots onto the ground and whomever is playing underneath, causing them to resemble different salamander species.
Concept Art: Poetry Markers features partially folded metal book-like forms on stakes, cemented into the ground. The text will be cut-out stencil font, allowing the landscape itself to be read as language. One side will be in English, the other Spanish.
About the Artist
Austen Camille (Canadian-American) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, builder, and gardener. Austen primarily makes site-responsive public work that aims to both build relationships with the local environment, as well as call attention to relationships that already exist within that environment. Their work is informed by poetry, critical theory, and conversations with experts. Austen often collects small natural and human-made objects to embed in their work.
Austen received their MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2020, and currently resides between Chestertown, MD and Alvin, TX. Their work has been commissioned and exhibited in a diverse range of landscapes, from northern Wyoming rivers to the high desert of eastern Oregon, from rolling farmland in southern Wisconsin to estuary marshes along the Hudson River. The work is always intended as an extension, rather than an intervention. Alongside and integrated with their studio practice, Austen works to forge connections between the arts and other disciplines.
