Everyday Heroes: Georgia artist paddles over 400 miles to raise awareness on local water issues

Credit: Julie Yarbrough

Credit: Julie Yarbrough

Sponsored by the local public works generator Flux Projects, the five-week expedition was designed to gather material for public artworks that Parish and Sunde unveiled in September at three metro area parks with South River tributaries: Perkerson Park, Arthur Langford Jr. Park and Kirkwood Urban Forest.

Those new installations included “river nooks,” gazebo-like arbors of natural materials collected from the South River watershed. Visitors to the nooks could also scan a QR code to listen to a 20-minute audio piece of nature, bird and water sounds from the river odyssey from Atlanta to the Atlantic.

Although the project ended this month, Parish says there are no plans to remove the sculptural art.

“The work in Perkseron Park had such a warm reception that the community has asked for that to remain,” said Parish. “We have to figure out maintenance, but that’s awesome.”

This isn’t Parish’s first project tackling local water issues. She’s dedicated to helping Atlantans get to know more about their river ecologies and fostering a more biophillic ethos in Georgia’s sprawling capital.

Atlanta to the Atlantic is a perfect example of Parish’s artistic activism and dedication. She undertook this voyage to raise awareness of the South River and Atlanta’s complicated history with it. Beginning just north of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and running for 60 miles, the South River was a source for Atlanta’s first public waterworks and the site for the city’s first sanitary sewer. Thanks largely to the South River Watershed Alliance and its partners, the river is nowadays safe to fish and recreate on.

“It definitely raised awareness,” said Parish. “The conversations I got to have with people while installing them here were like a throughline to the conversations we had with people on the journey. Many people use these places as their backyard and they have stories they’re excited to share about their relationship with it. But also, many people didn’t know where these waters connected or that the South River ran to the Atlantic Ocean.”

As an interdisciplinary artist, Parish is known for complicated works that mix theater, writing and nature. She also has a reputation for creating civilly engaged public works around Atlanta. That includes, most recently in 2023-2024, “The City is a Circle,” a free series of art talks and urban explorations along the BeltLine that became a book about Atlanta’s famous pedestrian path. That was on the heels of the 2022 public piece “Emergence,” which, similar to Atlanta to the Atlantic, created temporary natural sculptures at four natural springheads beneath Downtown Atlanta.

Parish still ponders what she gleaned from her life-changing river odyssey and what to do with her extra material. She’s planning another public project: a series of cyanotypes, an electrochemical printing process that creates a blue-and-white image without a camera, also called “sun printing,” on paper handmade from South River plant material.

“On the trip, every day I’d take a couple of impressions from whatever was on the water’s edge,” said Parish of the cyanotypes. “Right now, I have a few projects focused on Atlanta’s public spaces and connecting communities, whether they be communities of people or communities with the environment.”

HOW TO HELP

To learn how to get involved or donate to the South River Watershed Alliance, go to southriverga.org/donate.

To donate to Flux Projects, go to fluxprojects.org/give/donate/.