Awash in art

This wheelchair sculpture - and others that dot the 35-acre island - are the handiwork of Carolyn Lewenberg, one of the island’s rangers. Lewenberg is also the co-curator of the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment, a weekend-long interactive art exhibition that opens Saturday.

The Art Encampment is just one of many artistic endeavors taking place on the Boston Harbor Islands. There’s plenty more. From the Rebel Shakespeare Company’s performance of “Hamlet’’ on Georges Island to jazz concerts and landscape painting on Spectacle Island, the islands are awash in creative expression this summer.

“I think art on the harbor islands is viral,’’ said Lewenberg.

The 28-year-old lives in Hull, but spends five days a week on Bumpkin, working for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. She stays overnight, and spends her days greeting visitors and giving tours. She also makes sure the trails are clear of poison ivy, and devotes hours to pulling up Oriental bittersweet, an invasive vine that grows all over the island. She collects the bittersweet and then twists and weaves the long, flexible vines to create her sculptures.

“It’s a mix of natural resources management and interpreting the island’s history,’’ she said recently.

Lewenberg’s wheelchair creations are a nod to Bumpkin Island’s past as a summer home for children with physical disabilities. Burrage Hospital was built here more than a century ago, and on Oct. 11, 1901, The Boston Daily Globe wrote about the building: “A peculiar feature is the runways, divided into two parts, for boys and girls, and extending from the basement to the second floor. Up and down these inclined planes, with a rise of one foot in 10, invalids can be wheeled and children can walk who could not climb stairs.’’

“This was one of the first handicapped-accessible places,’’ said Lewenberg. “I wanted to pay homage to that with all of my sculptures.’’

The island and hospital building were turned over to the federal government in 1917 and used as a naval training station during World War I. The building burned down in 1945, toward the end of the Second World War, and was reduced to rubble.

On a recent afternoon, Lewenberg led a reporter on a tour of the island, and walked around the piles of yellow and red bricks that were once part of the hospital. “It will be a sculpture park, eventually,’’ she said.

Her long-term goal is to have Bumpkin Island become a venue for art all season long, and have visiting artists create artwork that will be displayed on the island.

The biggest art event here this season gets underway Thursday, when the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment brings in eight teams of artists who will camp out and create installations that will be open to the public this coming weekend.

Lewenberg is cocurating the affair with Megan Dickerson of the Berwick Research Institute, a nonprofit arts organization in Roxbury; and Jed Speare of Studio Soto, a gallery in Boston. They came up with the idea three years ago, and with support from the Boston Harbor Island Alliance and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, it has become an annual event.

The participating artists will bring with them everything they plan to use (including camping gear), and they are encouraged to use resources on the island, such as dead branches, rocks, litter, Oriental bittersweet, and other plants. The island is an archeological site, so the artists are required to treat it as such.

By having artists use resources on the island, the creative process becomes “a collaboration between the artist and the island,’’ said Lewenberg. “When you use island resources to create art . . . it’s a great way to connect people to the island.’’

Lewenberg has also set her sights on Lovells Island; she says she would like to hold an international sculpture festival there in 2011.

Over on Spectacle Island, a group of en plein air painters from the Hull Lifesaving Museum have been meeting regularly to paint land and seascapes. The island alliance had approached the museum earlier this year and invited the group to check out the island, said museum director Corinne Leung.

On a damp, soggy day last month, five of the artists did just that, boating to Spectacle Island to paint.

“We were skeptical at first,’’ said Leung. “But we were delighted at what a marvelous layout the island has. For all of us, it was delightful to see the harbor and city from a different point of view. It was wonderful.’’

Her fellow painters were so inspired, she said, that some of them are already talking about entering their island artwork in the museum’s Sea and Sky Show in October.

The group was to return to Spectacle last Friday and again on Aug. 7. Any artists looking for company are welcome to bring out their paint and canvas and join the group.

“We always welcome new members,’’ said Leung.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.