Magnolia Bayou Art Show

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Teens and pre-teens from the Hancock County Unit of the Boys and Girls Club celebrated the culmination of an intense summer STEM program with the opening reception for a multi-media art exhibition of their work on Saturday, August 5th, and Friday, August 11th. Scroll down for more info.
- photos by Ellis Anderson  

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The exhibition included a video documentary, interactive 3D sculpture of watershed dynamics, water quality exhibits and a species wall with paintings of over 50 species found in the bayou.   The videographer and documentary editor was Nick Berden, a 15-year-old entrepreneur with his own company, Berden Productions. 

As part of this ground-breaking program, in July, 50 teens and pre-teens from the Hancock County Boys and Girls Club participated in a drone flight over Magnolia Bayou and tested its water quality.  

The field trip was part of a summer-long STEM environmental education program led by Mississippi State University’s Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. 

Magnolia Bayou flows into the Bay of St. Louis at the Bay-Waveland Yacht Club.  While it's  mostly hidden from public view, the Magnolia Bayou Watershed is around 800 acres and includes much of downtown Bay St. Louis.  This means that stormwater runoff from the larger urban area affects the water quality in Magnolia Bayou and the Bay. 

After learning about the effects of stormwater runoff on water quality, volunteers from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and the Fisheries Southeast Regional Office worked alongside the students to collect and analyze the data.

Students also stopped at Dunbar Village at the headwaters of Magnolia Bayou where Richard Brown, senior scientist at Innovative Imaging & Research (I2R), piloted a drone over the Bayou and introduced the teens and pre-teens to this cutting-edge technology.  

In addition to I2R and NOAA, the Design Studio has pulled in several other partners to help immerse the students in the science, arts and culture of Magnolia Bayou including:

• Steve Barney, a local artist, creator of the STEAMpunk Pottery Project that integrates art into STEM, and founder of the Bay St. Louis Creative Arts Center;
• Starfish Café, an experiential learning café in downtown Bay St. Louis that has been plastic-free for almost three years;
• unabridged Architecture, a local LEED-accredited professional architecture group involved in resiliency and coastal restoration;
•  Smith & Lens, a local artist group and gallery that is involved in many creative downtown economic development initiatives; and
• Wild at Heart Rescue, a wildlife rehabilitation center located in Pascagoula.