New Hope Creek
1994
New Hope Creek which flows through Orange and Durham Counties is a major tributary of Jordan Lake, the Haw River, and eventually the Cape Fear River. I studied New Hope Creek with my Science and Math students. We started at the headwaters where we found the start of the creek at a spring that came bubbling from the ground. We studied the New Hope all the way to its confluence into Jordan Lake. Students studied fish, invertebrate insects, salamanders, crayfish, birds, beavers, and the human history of the land. The students created drawings, paintings, screenprints, musical compositions, poetry, photographs, and journals. In the process of all this, I used a “fish-eye” wide angle lens to take photographs of some of my favorite places on the creek. “New Hope Creek” was my first in a series of three screenprints. This print in 9 colors shows a pool under a small waterfall where I would take my children fishing. With tiny bamboo poles, three feet long, a small length of fishing line, a split-shot weight, a barbless hook, and an earthworm, we would sneak up the rocks above the pool and drop our line into the water. When a fish would take the worm, it felt like an electrical shock coming through the line, the bamboo, and into your hand. We always caught fish. It was strictly catch-and-release fishing. No fish were harmed by the inspiration this hole provided for this print.
