--------------------The view looking East between 4th and 5th Streets, north of Walnut.
The City, that is. These mysterious chalk markings, to which we referred in an earlier posting, were left by local artist Winifred Lutz, whose earthwork recalls the path of Dock Creek as it once flowed through this part of what is now Independence National Historical Park.
Dock Creek disappeared 150 years ago, ending life as a polluted sewer. But in the tradition of Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), Lutz is creating this temporary installation showing the creek's path between Walnut and Chestnut, Third and Fifth Streets.
The work is not completed. Lutz will be adding to the installtion through September. Soon (but not yet) visitors will be able to pick up a map at the museum of the American Philosophical Society, 104 S. 5th Street, and follow Dock Creek's devolution from what Lutz describes as "a pristine waterway when William Penn founded Philadelphia," to a dumping place for tanneries and slaughterhouses, "eventually turning into a sewer and then a subsurface waterway, now long forgotten."
ArtsWatch will be following the project as it falls into place.
