we are water
Since 2014, I have created interactive installations that focus on cultivating an empathic relationship with water by inviting viewers to witness and/or participate in contemplative practice.
we are water is constructed out of previous sculptures, disassembled and reimagined here. This act is an exercise in non-attachment, letting go of existing work, allowing it to flow into its present form.
The test tubes which line the bridge/table hold water collected from creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans from previous installations. They also hold the Colorado River, collected over a summer as I traveled its path between California and Colorado. In the spirit of reciprocity with the river, I asked myself, “What could I possibly give back as I collected these small samples? How could I show my love and gratitude?” As a small gesture, I began reading to the river a blessing by the poet John O’Donohue, “In Praise of Water.”* I hope participants sitting here will also become curious about ways of sharing an act of love with the water within and around them.
Further contemplating ways of communing and communicating with the seen and unseen, I wanted to pull attention to the crossing of a bridge. This took on the construction of the bridge/table between the two chairs. The three openings in the sculpture are crossed by a woven fabric of receipts bound with wire. They are the material of previous tapestry work, which explores the hidden nature of consumption. They reference the complexity of our habits as consumers, provoking inquiry around how we hold and behold our responsibility and interdependence on this planet.
The illuminated canoe shape floating above was created by hand-stitching my photographic negatives, part of an earlier work, Knowing Your Water. Juxtaposing the test tubes–signifying science and research–with the photographic negatives–signifying the emotional intimacy of memories–emphasizes the ways in which we study our interconnectedness.
Ultimately, we are water invites viewers to sit at the bridge/table to reflect on their relationship with water and to consider: What are the personal, political, historical and sacred relationships held with water? In the slow stillness of contemplation, what surfaces and integrates?
we are water is constructed out of previous sculptures, disassembled and reimagined here. This act is an exercise in non-attachment, letting go of existing work, allowing it to flow into its present form.
The test tubes which line the bridge/table hold water collected from creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans from previous installations. They also hold the Colorado River, collected over a summer as I traveled its path between California and Colorado. In the spirit of reciprocity with the river, I asked myself, “What could I possibly give back as I collected these small samples? How could I show my love and gratitude?” As a small gesture, I began reading to the river a blessing by the poet John O’Donohue, “In Praise of Water.”* I hope participants sitting here will also become curious about ways of sharing an act of love with the water within and around them.
Further contemplating ways of communing and communicating with the seen and unseen, I wanted to pull attention to the crossing of a bridge. This took on the construction of the bridge/table between the two chairs. The three openings in the sculpture are crossed by a woven fabric of receipts bound with wire. They are the material of previous tapestry work, which explores the hidden nature of consumption. They reference the complexity of our habits as consumers, provoking inquiry around how we hold and behold our responsibility and interdependence on this planet.
The illuminated canoe shape floating above was created by hand-stitching my photographic negatives, part of an earlier work, Knowing Your Water. Juxtaposing the test tubes–signifying science and research–with the photographic negatives–signifying the emotional intimacy of memories–emphasizes the ways in which we study our interconnectedness.
Ultimately, we are water invites viewers to sit at the bridge/table to reflect on their relationship with water and to consider: What are the personal, political, historical and sacred relationships held with water? In the slow stillness of contemplation, what surfaces and integrates?
Reading to water
|
Reading to Boulder Creek, Boulder, Colorado 2022
Collecting water along the Colorado River,
Blythe, CA
|
In praise of water
John O’Donohue Let us bless the grace of water: The imagination of the primeval ocean Where the first forms of life stirred And emerged to dress the vacant earth With warm quilts of color. The well whose liquid root worked Through the long night of clay, Trusting ahead of itself openings That would yet yield to its yearning Until at last it arises in the desire of light To discover the pure quiver of itself Flowing crystal clear and free Through delighted emptiness. The courage of a river to continue belief In the slow fall of ground, Always falling farther Toward the unseen ocean. The river does what words would love, Keeping its appearance By insisting on disappearance; Its only life surrendered To the event of pilgrimage, Carrying the origin to the end, Seldom pushing or straining, Keeping itself to itself Everywhere all along its flow, All at one with its sinuous mind, An utter rhythm, never awkward, It continues to swirl Through all unlikeness, With elegance: A ceaseless traverse of presence Soothing on each side The stilled fields, Sounding out its journey, Raising up a buried music Where the silence of time Becomes almost audible. Tides stirred by the eros of the moon Draw from that permanent restlessness Perfect waves that languidly rise And pleat in gradual forms of aquamarine To offer every last tear of delight At the altar of stillness inland. And the rain in the night, driven By the loneliness of the wind To perforate the darkness, As though some air pocket might open To release the perfume of the lost day And salvage some memory From its forsaken turbulence And drop its weight of longing Into the earth, and anchor. Let us bless the humility of water, Always willing to take the shape Of whatever otherness holds it, The buoyancy of water Stronger than the deadening, Downward drag of gravity, The innocence of water, Flowing forth, without thought Of what awaits it, The refreshment of water, Dissolving the crystals of thirst. Water: voice of grief, Cry of love, In the flowing tear. Water: vehicle and idiom Of all the inner voyaging That keeps us alive. Blessed be water, Our first mother. From To Bless the Space Between Us |