41.4 F
Wrightsville Beach
Friday, March 29, 2024

Arboretum rings in 25 years

Must read

Sunday, Oct. 5, will mark the quarter century anniversary for the New Hanover County Arboretum. Along with the annual Art in the Arboretum art show, which will take place Oct. 3-5, a commemoration celebration will take place Saturday, Oct. 4., including the presentation of a time capsule to be buried until 2039. 

The time capsule will contain area newspapers and magazines, arboretum history, and a collection of letters and drawings from Cape Fear Center for Inquiry students. 

Jennifer England’s sixth through eighth grade creative writing class is one of those classes participating in the time capsule program and the topics of interest for the students ranged from friends and family to music, video games, technology and environmental concerns. 

Thinking about how their favorite things will be different in 25 years, when many will be in their late 30s, caused the students to speculate about what life will be like when the time capsule is unearthed.

“Well, we are not going to have flying cars because we said that years ago,” Ethan Pardieu said. “I think we might get somewhere new or find a new galaxy.”

Maddie Meyers-Osband said popular music would change as it always has and that she would probably have more friends. 

“I think for music, there will just be more and more albums, and it may not change very much except for the style,” Meyers-Osband said. “I think I will still have the same friends but even more because I will have gone more places.”

She also speculated about the future of communication. 

“What if when we make a call a little person comes up from the screen and it is a little holographic image there in front of you,” Meyers-Osband said.

For Zach Mathis, what the future holds in store for video games is a question he would like answered. 

“My idea of technology in 25 years is we are still going to be copying all our video games from the Japanese and we are still not going to be able to clone humans even though we have the technology to,” Mathis said.

In addition to technologies and communication, the class also grew concerned about what Earth will look like 25 years from now. 

“Animals are going extinct and all sorts of plants are going away, and it is not fair to them because they were here first,” Meyers-Osband said. “If you are getting all this money from chopping down trees and sending pollution into the air, where are you going to spend that when the Earth is gone?”

Camden Lewis also said she was concerned about the future of the Earth, bringing up the fact that environmental abuses have not stopped.  

“Some people really get on my nerves because they will sacrifice the Earth for their money,” Lewis said. 

For 25 years the New Hanover County Arboretum has preserved a slice of Earth near Bradley Creek, full of the biodiversity native to southeastern North Carolina. 

To keep the arboretum up and running, the annual Art in the Arboretum art show and sale has helped raise crucial funding for the gardens. 

Sue Watkins, Art in the Arboretum chairwoman and Friends of the Arboretum member, said this year’s event was expanded to a full three days with more than 125 artists featured. The arboretum’s Ability Garden for special needs and handicapped gardeners will also have its own sale featuring the artwork of many of its members. 

“This is our biggest fundraiser for supporting the grounds and projects of the arboretum,” Watkins said. “The Friends of the Arboretum mission is to support the projects and the grounds, and our goal is to make enough money to keep the projects going.”

With more than $25,000 worth of art purchased during last year’s Art in the Arboretum, Watkins said many of the artists requested the event to expand to a full three days versus one and one-half days, as it was in the past. 

Some of the notable two-dimensional artists featured in the 2014 event include paintings by Janet Sessoms, Sandy Nelson and Lisa Lightfoot, and photography by Karen Wiles. 

Watkins said there has been a growing number of three-dimensional artists during Art in the Arboretum with this year including sculpture by Kevin Duval, jewelry by Mitzy Jonkheer, clay tiles by Sandra Siemering, and pottery by Motsy Wynn and Carroll Crouch. 

“We have always had a good collection of two-dimensional art, but we have had a lot of other kinds of art the past couple years and that area has really grown,” she said. “A lot of the three-dimensional art can be used in someone’s garden as garden features and we encourage them to bring those types of pieces.”

Art in the Arboretum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Oct. 3-5, with 25 percent of the art sales benefiting the arboretum and 30 percent of the Ability Garden’s sales benefitting its programs. The 25th anniversary ceremony is set for 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 4. 

email [email protected] 

 

- Advertisement -spot_img

More articles

- Advertisement -spot_img

Latest articles