I am a Senior Research Scientist for the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute and this is one of several pieces made for a project called Wool and Water.

Wool and Water is a data art project that blends fiber art with scientific data to create visual representations of changing water quality conditions in the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin. In association with the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute has embarked on a collaborative fiber arts project supported by the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership to showcase the legacy of protecting clean water in the Lake Champlain Basin and beyond.

Meacham Lake in the northern Adirondacks is one of approximately 60 lakes monitored by the Adirondack Aquatic Invasive Species Spread Prevention Program of the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute. Boat launch stewards are located at the New York State boat launch on Meacham to interact with boaters, perform inspections of incoming and outgoing vessels, and help prevent the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species to waterways across the region. The data woven in this piece represent the record of boats inspected by watershed stewards at Meacham Lake in 2020. We inspected a total of 357 vessels, between 6 June and 30 August, each of which is shown in blue (launching boats) or light green (retrieving boats). Most boats were clean, but bright green stripes represent boats that were found to be carrying aquatic organisms of any kind, and orange stripes represent boats found to be carrying aquatic invasive species (in these cases Eurasian water milfoil and/or curly leaf pondweed). This record of the Meacham launch code was created on a small frame loom and woven with lightweight yarn; it is 16 inches in length. A comparable weaving to represent all of the boats inspected by the stewardship program in 2020 (>110,000) would be 411 feet long.

Pattern: simple weaving on a frame loom

Data: 2020 New York State Watercraft Inspection Steward Program Application (WISPA) database http://nyis.info/wispa/