Cicero Swamp is often overlooked as a place of beauty… but, one local artist turned her illustrations about the swamp into an art exhibit. Katie Mulligan grew up ten miles away and felt the negative connotations about mosquitoes and the chemicals used to kill them off. However, the more time she spent there over the summer, she said her perceptions about Cicero Swamp changed.
“Not incorrect but, maybe I just had never thought of wetlands and swamps in a sort of deeper way. So, I‘d like to think that this exhibition allows a space to do that for viewers in a way where like I’ve culminated everything, it’s all sort of here,” Mulligan said. “But, there’s still a window and a space for folks to interpret it, in a way they would like to interpret it.”
Mulligan wants people who come to her exhibit through their own lens and decide for themselves. The exhibit is part of her graduate studies at Syracuse University. It included research about Cicero Swamp in archives dating back to the 1900’s at the Onondaga Historical Association.
“An attempted draining with dynamite at one point and there’s still sort of craters in the swamp. And it was a project that was abandoned but, just the volume of I think destruction I encountered in the swamp made me very thankful that in the 70’s it was protected as a wildlife management area.”
Mulligan says researching the swamp has made her realize Central New York has a wonderful concentration of unique and beautiful ecosystems. For example, 20 orchids are documented in Cicero Swamp, a thriving rattlesnake population and rare bogs. “Reimaging the Myth of Cicero Swamp” runs through October 24th at ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse. Mulligan hosts a discussion about the exhibit Thursday night from 7 pm to 8:45 pm.
