The Tinker Creek Project → Roanoke Arts Commission

Join us in our Tinker Creek Project, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the City’s newest stretch of greenway. Together, we’ve read the book and engaged in some terrific conversations (recorded and posted below)! Now, we’re creating art together, and explore potential public art projects along the greenway!

“I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.” Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

+ Next workshops and opportunities

– Saturday walks & workshops along the greenway
– Art making opportunities
– Mindfulness activities
– Calls for art

TBD – Poetry in Nature with Rachel Anne Morris
TBD – The Eye Planetarium Field Trip with Katie Brooks
TBD – Developing a Public Art Project Goal Statement
June 1 – Municipal Art Show Call (for art inspired by Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and relating to mindfulness, and intimate connections to nature

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper’s Magazine Press in 1974, winning the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction). We’ll have online discussions and get out on some visits to the site from the 13th Street NE trailhead to Mason Mill Park. Join us as we celebrate the role of the natural world in teaching us to see, exploring together how we might pass along the work’s sense of curiosity and wonder.

OUR SCHEDULE

We expect that these will be hybrid meetings, both in person at 117 Church Avenue, SW and online via zoom.

Learn more about the project’s inception in this Cardinal News article.

DATES:
Jan. 28: Organizing meeting: Get to know each other
Watch the Video from the organizing meeting
View the Slide Deck from the organizing meeting

Feb 18: Chapters 1-3 with Guide Tom Gardner
Watch the Video from session one
Learn more about Tom Gardner here.

Feb 25: Chapters 4-6 with Guide Suzanne Thorniley
Watch the Video from Session Two

March 4, 7 PM with Guide Rachel Pence, VA Dept. of Environmental Quality
– Chapters 7 and 8 (pages 104 – 146)
– Watch the Video from Session Three

March 18 – The Tinker Creek Project with guides Ashley Wilson Fellers and Thomas Fellers
Chapters 9-11 (pages 147 – 206)
Watch the VIDEO here

March 25, 7 PM
The Tinker Creek Project with guide Natalia Michel, artist in residence
Chapters 12-13
Watch the VIDEO here

April 5, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
Nature Walk Along Tinker Creek
1902 13th St. NE
Phone – day of – (540) 529-4879

April 8, 7 PM
The Tinker Creek Project
Final two chapters and wrap up
Watch the VIDEO here.

April 26 – Tinker Creek Mindfulness walk with Suzanne Thorniley and Ashley Wilson Fellers.

Our Sessions

ORGANIZING SESSION
January 28, 2025
Download the Slide Deck
Watch the Video
Reading section for next meeting
Pages 1-53
Chapters: Heaven and Earth in Jest, Seeing, and Winter

Session One
February 18, 2025
Guide Tom Gardner, professor emeritus Virginia Tech
Watch the VIDEO

Session 2
Guide Suzanne Thorniley
Chapters 4-6, 54-103
Watch the Video

Session 3
Chapters 7 and 8 (pages 104 -146)
Guide Rachel Pence

Rachel is a Roanoke Valley native and has lived in Virginia all her life. She works full-time for the state as a water quality monitoring specialist and also works part-time as a manager of a local volunteer citizen science monitoring program, called the Roanoke River Project. She has a huge passion for aquatic insects, and like Annie Dillard, has fallen in love with the “secret life of streams”.