Selected Water-Related Projects
“Washed Away” was exhibited in Perspectives 2021, at Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea. It is a hand-drawn video utilizing very limited materials: two sheets of paper, charcoal, eraser, and a cell-phone. Its vertical format suggests a looking through a window, offering a hint of voyeurism. It speaks of human life, desires, and intertwines the many meanings of water— especially its life giving and life-taking qualities. With 60% of our bodies composed of water, humans are water-based creatures. 70% of our planet's surface is covered water, and it is essential to our very existence. We develop into human form protected by the water in our mother's womb. Each night, we exhale water into the air around us. When we are overwhelmed by emotion, salty wet tears overflow our eyes. Water is used in our cleansing rituals and sacred ceremonies. And yet it also has the power to destroy out lives, and to wipe out villages and entire cities.
The drawings in this video recognize the small scale of a human life in comparison to the eternal power of water. The immeasurable forces of water existed long before humans ever walked the face of the earth. And the throbbing pulsing cycles of tides and waves will continue long after we are gone. The drawings speak of transitions to the eternal. We live for a moment, and then are gone, changed, and consumed to be formed anew.
A short animation reflecting on the poetry of the earth's water. The animation was created by Heather Stivison, using charcoal and a cell-phone. The video was made in collaboration with and support of the Buzzards Bay Coalition, a Massachusetts-based environmental organization, it premiered in their education space, 114 Front Street, New Bedford Massachusetts.
A Sense of Water. is made with lightweight fabric embellished with water designs. It is sensitive to movement in the gallery space and moves in response to the changing air currents caused by human activity. So too, does human activity impact the ocean itself.
The art project was part of the Ocean Virtual Art Residency, an international program that has been endorsed as an Ocean Decade activity for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
A Sense of Water is a prototype for an immersive installation that viewers will be able to walk through. My goal in creating this installation is to bring attention to just one of the many ways we need our oceans, and to show how human actions impact the ocean. The works consider how our oceans help us remove some of the excess carbon we humans contribute to our atmosphere—and the environmental cost of that process.