Art Made to Disappear Transforms Sawmill Landing Park

For one week at the end of June, Sawmill Landing Park in downtown Moss Point became a living gallery. Seven middle school artists, guided by the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, filled the park with portals, banners, and painted creatures made from materials the park itself provided. Then, exactly as designed, the art began returning to the land.

A week of creation at Sawmill Landing Park

The initiative is called the Coast Ephemeral Project, a program of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, and this June marked the museum’s first event at Sawmill Landing Park. From June 22 through June 26, students Azalia, Boe, Cyrus, Emma Kate, Miya, Trinity, and Raygen worked alongside WAMA Arts and Environmental Education Director Sandra Bilbo and Mississippi environmental artist Robin Whitfield to reimagine the green space at the corner of Dantzler and Main, on the Escatawpa River.

“We’ve taken inspiration from the park and used materials from the park,” Bilbo told WLOX. “The children created a story to invite adults to explore the inside of the park where it’s quite peaceful inside. And then they can kind of reconnect with their inner child.”

Three portals: earth, water, and sky

The students built three portal structures, a square, a triangle, and a circle, each one an entrance into a different world. Banners marked the way: skinks for earth, fish for water, butterflies for sky. Visitors who stepped off the park’s 800-foot walking loop found trails winding toward the central green, where the three worlds met and a surprise waited at the center. Along the way, handmade artwork celebrated the creatures that share the park with us, including the full life cycle of the eastern swallowtail butterfly.

Art that gives itself back

Ephemeral art is made to be temporary. Built from natural, biodegradable materials, it stands for a little while, then breaks down and returns to the landscape that supplied it. Nothing was hauled in and nothing gets left behind; the park simply reabsorbs its art. For the young artists, that impermanence is the point. Work like this asks visitors to slow down, look closely, and treasure something they know will not last.

“The children have been fantastic,” Whitfield told WLOX. “We’ve sealed a really tight little bond that we’ve explored and created together.”

A community that showed up

Projects like this one take a village, and ours delivered. According to Our Mississippi Home, the Coast Ephemeral Project was funded by a South Arts Cross-Sector Impact Grant with support from the City of Moss Point, the Rotary Club of Moss Point, and the Pascagoula River Audubon Center. WAMA plans to bring the project to more locations across the Gulf Coast, and we hope the portals at Sawmill Landing were only the beginning of the museum’s story here in the River City.

Some of the portals and banners still stand today, softening a little more each week as the park takes them back. If you want to see them, go soon; the gentle disappearing act is the whole idea. The park is open every day, so bring the kids, walk the loop, and see what the young artists saw. To find more ways to enjoy our parks and programs, visit Moss Point Parks and Recreation, and keep an eye on the community calendar for what is coming next.