Mapping the Sawkill
Mapping the Sawkill Watershed Project is a yearlong community initiative led by artist Jennifer Zackin, in partnership with the Woodstock Land Conservancy's Ecologies of Water program, the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM) social practice artist-in-residence program, the Town of Woodstock's Drinking Water Source Protection Program (DWSP2), and the Woodstock Community. The Sawkill Creek serves as a vital ecological artery for the Hudson Valley, covering a 42-square-mile watershed from Echo Lake in Woodstock into the Esopus and then finally into the Hudson River, connecting all who live along its path. Focusing on an eight-mile-long riparian corridor of the Creek, Mapping the Sawkill is a diverse ecological exploration and celebration of the land. This initiative encompasses a series of participatory sensory workshops and events, a multi-month Stream Steward program, and community mapping sessions with Woodstock Land Conservancy. It culminates in an immersive art exhibition by Jennifer Zackin opening at WAAM in October of 2026.
At the heart of Mapping the Sawkill is a woven map of the Sawkill Creek. Shaped by data collected through the initiative’s Stream Steward program, this sculpture illustrates the creek and its riparian zones —the bedrock, log jams, and sites of erosion along its stream banks —in a code of knotted rope. All of the scientific data, field measurements, felt encounters, and personal stories will be woven into this three-dimensional map, which will be constructed from the collective knowledge of the community that lives alongside it. This central sculpture will be accompanied by two-dimensional maps drawn from community research and scientific assessment in WAAM’s gallery. A set of maps are being developed through community participation, as residents are invited to mark them with erosion spots, personal memories, and observations —making it a document that grows richer with every hand working on it. Woodstock’s municipal wells draw directly from the Sawkill watershed, and every resident living in the Village of Woodstock drinks the Creek’s water. It provides a clear example of a direct link between land conservation and public health.
The project kicked off March 14, 2026 at Mountain View Studio in Woodstock, NY, where over 100 people gathered in support of the Creek and this initiative. Featuring a keynote address by Judy Abbott (Munsee Lenape), the event brought together local scientists, artists, and community members to introduce Mapping the Sawkill’s Stream Steward program, which is unfolding throughout this year. Stream Stewards are training on the ground and learning to survey key features of the stream–including assessing erosion and habitat quality for fish and invertebrates, measuring water chemistry, and documenting change throughout the period of study.
WORKSHOP DATES & DETAILS
Mapping the Sawkill Sensory Workshop Series
ALL WORKSHOPS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - PLEASE RSVP
06/20/26,12PM – 1PM
Summer Solstice: Celebrating the Second Chakra & Water
with Linda Mary Montano, BRING YOGA MAT
The Mothership Gallery, 6 Sgt Richard Quinn Drive, Woodstock NY 12498
06/20/26, 3PM - 5PM
Playing The Sawkill collaborative percussion performance with Dreiky Caprice,
WEAR WATER SHOES
Comeau Property, 95 Comeau Drive, Woodstock, NY 12498
- meet in parking lot by the kiosk
06/23/26, 4PM-6PM
Summit to Stream: Building a Resilient Watershed Together
Woodstock Library, 10 Dixon Ave, Woodstock NY 12498
(This event includes a mapping activity)
07/11/26, 12PM – 1:30PM
Meditative Painting at the Fontyne Kill with Coryn Nadeau (WLC)
Zena Cornfield, Zena Road, Woodstock, NY 12498
07/18/26, 11:30AM – 1PM
The Many Voices of a River: Listening and Field Recording the Sawkill River with Zaneta
Comeau Property, 95 Comeau Drive, Woodstock, NY 12498
- meet in parking lot by the kiosk
07/26/26, 11:00AM -1:00PM
Sawkill Walking Tour #1: Explore the Sawkill in the Bearsville Flats area adjacent to the Town's drinking water wells with Beth Reichheld.
Rick Volz Field, Dixon Ave, Woodstock, NY 12498
- meet in parking lot
08/01/26, 12:00PM
Macroinvertebrate Photography with Frank Beres (WLC)
Zena Cornfield, Zena Road, Woodstock, NY 12498
08/30/26, 11:00AM -1:00PM
Sawkill Walking Tour #2: exploring the Comeau Property with Beth Reicheld
Comeau Property, 95 ComEau Drive, Woodstock, NY 12498
- meet in parking lot by the kiosk
09/12/26, 1:00PM - 3:00PM
Citizen Science Microbial Cultivation Workshop with Adam Zaretsky
The Mothership Gallery, 6 Sgt Richard Quinn Drive, Woodstock NY 12498
09/26/26, 11:00AM -1:30PM
Sawkill Walking Tour #3: Exploring little deep to big deep with Beth Reicheld
Little Deep parking lot, Zena Road, Woodstock, NY 12498
- meet in parking lot
10/03/26, Time & Location TBC
Riparian Buffer planting along a section of the Sawkill with Andrew Faust
Location TBC
10/17/26, 11:00AM
Histories Of The Sawkill Through Human Impacts (WLC)
Historical Society of Woodstock, 20 Comeau Drive, Woodstock, NY 12498
10/23/26 -11/29/26
A B O U T
Mapping The Sawkill Exhibition
Woodstock Artist Association Museum (WAAM), 28 Tinker St, Woodstock, NY 12498
Mapping the Sawkill is organized by Jennifer Zackin, with support from The Woodstock Land Conservancy and the Woodstock Artist Association Museum. Contributors include Beth Reichheld, Mary McNamara, Patty Goodwin, Miranda Javid, Mark Vian, Telemak Olson, and Sally Rogers from the Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program. The initiative is made possible with support from a grant from Arts Mid-Hudson, as well as by the fourteen volunteers from the Sawkill Watershed region who have contributed their time as stewards of the Creek.
Jennifer Zackin:
Jennifer Zackin is a transdisciplinary artist and educator based in the Hudson Valley, New York and the Sacred Valley of the Inca, Cusco, Peru. Zackin's close engagement with materials creates moments of alchemy, transforming the familiar into the unexpected. Her practice begins in the studio and expands into the community, nurturing relationships, supporting regenerative methods, and honoring the performance of art-life. Working across sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, drawing, painting, photography, and social sculpture, Zackin explores abstraction as a gateway to understanding complex ecosystems and ecological systems. In her “Soil Series,” she creates vibrant abstract compositions that explore the elemental forces of biodiversity. Her practice has included upcycling burlap coffee bags into trellises for medicinal plants grown for the public’s use, wrapping a grove of trees with brightly colored rope to draw our attention to unseen relationships among the living world, and crafting absorbent salvaged-material sculptures to clean up toxic oil spills. Zackin's work has been exhibited in museums nationally and worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Zacheta National Art Gallery in Warsaw, Poland, and she has received commissions from institutions including the Katonah Museum of Art, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Socrates Sculpture Park, and MASS MoCA. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and residencies, including Arts Mid-Hudson, Art Omi, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Zackin and her partner Adolfo Ibañez founded the Chokechaka Artist Residency Program in the Sacred Valley of the Inca, Cusco, Peru.
Beth Reichheld, Stream Steward Volunteer Coordinator
Bet Reichheld served as director of the NYC DEP Stream Management Program (SMP) for 30+ years, working with county soil and water conservation districts (SWCDs) and communities to develop and implement an ecosystem-based approach to managing rivers and floodplains throughout the Catskills–an approach that dramatically reduces erosion and flood risks, protects infrastructure, and improves habitats and water quality. In collaboration with those living and working in the Catskills, the SMP and SWCDs have built a science-based and proactive stream-stewardship ethic and implemented stream restoration projects on dozens of miles of Catskill streams. Beth has served on Woodstock zoning and comprehensive planning committees and the Woodstock Land Conservatory board and helped develop the Catskills’ wetland and watercourse ordinance. Before coming to the Catskills in 1992, Beth earned her bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Bowdoin College and master's degree in forest science from Yale.
Mark Vian, Stream Steward Scientist Mentor
Mark Vian worked as a river restoration ecologist with the NYCDEP Stream Management Program for 28 years, helping to define and implement management plans for Stony Clove Creek, Westkill Creek, Upper Rondout Creek, and the Upper Neversink River. Prior to his work with the NYCDEP, Mark worked for the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve and as field manager for the monthly water quality monitoring at the Reserve's four tidal wetland research sites, as well as a number of synoptic storm event sampling projects on the tributaries that feed them. He serves as Principal at Deep Stream Tracking, which applies animal-tracking methodology to the study of rivers and streams. He has lived within earshot of the Kaaterskill Creek on the eastern escarpment of the Catskills since 2006.
Telemak Olsen, Stream Steward Scientist Mentor
Telemak (Telly) Olsen is a geologist specializing in river systems and earth-science education. He has contributed to geoscientific research in landscape response to wildfire, surface exposure dating, and tectonics. Telly currently supervises the SUNY Ulster Watershed Conservation Corps internship program in partnership with New York City DEP's Stream Management Program. He has a B.A. in Geoscience from Skidmore College and a M.S. in Geology from Western Washington University. Outside of streams, Telly enjoys playing with his two cats, George and Dookou, and mountain biking in the Catskills.
The Woodstock Land Conservancy
The Woodstock Land Conservancy is committed to the protection and preservation of the open lands, forests, water resources, scenic areas, and historic sites in Woodstock and the surrounding area. Accredited by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, the Conservancy protects and stewards hundreds of acres of land in the eastern Catskills area. Learn more at https://www.woodstocklandconservancy.org/.
Woodstock Artists Association & Museum:
Founded in 1919 by a group of Woodstock painters, the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (WAAM) has served for over a century as the cultural heart of the Hudson Valley art community. What began as a single gallery providing exhibition space for the region's working artists — earning the nickname "local Louvre" from Life magazine in 1938 — has grown into a full museum complex with contemporary galleries, a permanent collection of more than 2,000 works, archives, and active education programs. Located in the center of Woodstock, New York, WAAM presents a year-round schedule of solo and group exhibitions, community events, and educational programming, linking the storied legacy of the Woodstock Art Colony to the living artists and audiences of today. WAAM provides educational opportunities for families, schools, members, and the general public, including tours and hands-on activities for families and school groups. The museum’s Youth Exhibition Space (YES!) features work from area schools, inspired by examples from the Permanent Collection.
This project is made possible with funds from the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.