Rillito River Project on NPR
Listen to Patmore Lewis discuss the Rillito River Project and our work.
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Rillito River Project by Patmore Lewis
Learn all about the Rillito River Project CD and find out where to buy it.
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Watch the Introduction
View the introduction by Ellen Benjoya Skotheim, Creative Director, Rillito River Project (Video).
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In January, 2007, an international group of artists, architects, musicians, writers, builders, and anthropologists gathered in the dry Rillito riverbed to explore, discuss, learn, and collectively interpret through creative expression the whispered prose of the dry riverbed. The previous summer the Rillito filled with rain, rushing and roaring – at once beautiful and dangerous. Winter found debris still tightly woven by the brute force of the monsoon against the concrete bridge piers under Campbell Avenue.
A story was being told for those who cared to listen. Uprooted trees and broken branches, plastic water bottles and shopping bags, chunks of masonry, pieces of furniture, piles of dark bat guano, cigarette butts, creosote bushes and twisted bits of metal constructed a visceral narrative of climate change. Imaginations of the assembled floated from utility to the fantastic as they began to share idea and concepts on ways to bring attention to the missing water.