By Clara Rose Thornton
“Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a spring brook till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a strong kinship with the waters of this world.”
I stumbled upon this quote once in a book by nature writer and columnist Hal Borland, entitled “Sundial of the Seasons: A Selection of Outdoor Editorials from the New York Times.” There is something so succinct about the sentence that does not attempt to answer or reveal why water holds such mystical sway over us, while communicating without doubt that it does. That is something like the nature of water itself.
This simple elemental force, this random fastening of hydrogen and oxygen, runs through our cells, our kitchens, our streets, our cities, separates our continents. Allows the planet habitation. Gives life, and takes away. And even with science at our backs, there is no reason nor rhyme. We need it, it fuels us and romances us, we play with it and say we love it …
Yet it doesn’t answer back. Its basic truth just keeps flowing, silent and eternal.
Unfortunately its held tongue, like anything, is not safe around artists.
One of the reasons for art’s existence is that the human mind and spirit has an innate need for questing, filtering the findings through our own experience and then retelling. This is true for everyone, not just artists in the traditional sense; storytellers and vivid dreamers merely occupy different rooms in the house where painters rent. Artists may simply feel the impulse to shout their “reality findings” louder.
With water’s relation to our lives so basic, yet unknowable and bizarre, it proved a field day for the upwards of 100 artists chosen to exhibit water-themed work in 2D, 3D and video installation for the sprawling and unprecedented H20: Film on Water traveling exhibition, debuting in Bellows Falls this Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Great River Arts Institute with a wine reception.
William Ruger — owner of Newport Mill gallery, a newly renovated landmark along the Sugar River in Newport, N.H. — approached Cynthia Reeves about the creation of an inaugural exhibit for his 18,000-square-foot space. Reeves is a veritable Connecticut River Valley art star: She founded Great River Arts in Bellows Falls and is its creative director, founded Spheris Gallery in 1995 in Hanover, N.H., and founded Cynthia-Reeves in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood in 2001. The Cynthia-Reeves Web site proclaims a proclivity toward “strong conceptual foundation and innovative use of materials, specifically mixed media, three-dimensional works and site-specific installation.” Her recent curatorial fascinations more than affirm this, with H20: Film on Water following in the vein of the current Art & Science series at her namesake gallery.
Reeves prefers shows with an overarching conceptual unification, that toy with the intellect as much as, or perhaps more than, the visual sense. The Art & Science series — highlighting five artists over the course of three spring and summer shows, with the last installment under way — aims to broaden and elucidate discourses around scientific endeavor. Work includes Sheila Gallagher’s drawings created through recording her own eye movement at Boston College’s Eye Tracking Lab and Claire Watkins’ kinetic sculptures mimicking the human nervous system with tree branches and LED lights.
With Newport Mill situated on the Sugar River and its history being so inexplicably bound with that Connecticut River tributary, in addition to the desire to capitalize on an opportunity for unifying the southern Connecticut River watershed with site-specific art, Reeves chose a fitting water-based theme tying science to our daily lives and decided that it should be a traveling show—that it should flow on down the river, so to speak.
The show officially opened at the flagship Newport Mill location with 50 juried videos and numerous curated photographic series, site-based installations and paintings on Aug. 8. The evening before, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center participated through Shuli Sadé’s “Waterfall,” a 15-video installation, as part of their season’s opening exhibits. Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H., supplied the sneak peak on Aug. 6 with six juried videos. There will be 10 videos at the Bellows Falls installation.
A piece by New York artist Amy Globus entitled “Electric Sheep” sharply documents an octopus struggling to make its way through glass tubing, evoking a dystopically futuristic mood inspired by Syd Mead’s set designs for the 1982 film “Blade Runner.” The title comes from the Phillip K. Dick novel that inspired the film, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Artist Jeffrey Blondes lives between Paris and the Loire Valley, and creates work exploring the intersection of landscape and time. In his “Summer Solstice: 24-Hour Film,” a tract of land 124 miles north of the Artic Circle on Tornetrask, a large lake on the Swedish-Norwegian border, captures an entire day cycle in real time; thus it transports each spectator visually and temporally to a moment they are now implicated in because of its truth, though distanced from due to geography and its passing.
Other area arts events of note abound this week — though are comparatively landlocked. This weekend is Bellows Falls’ monthly Third Friday Art Walk, and the Italian café/performance venue Boccelli’s On the Canal will feature the Red Fox Session Band’s Irish fiddle jam on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. and New Orleans’ popular blues vocalist Samirah Evans on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. On Monday, Aug. 24, at Bellows Falls’ Rockingham Public Library, Vermont Independent Media hosts the 5 p.m. workshop “Practical Writing” with Jeff Potter, editor of respected Windham County newspaper The Commons. Come for the water, stay for the tide.
Clara Rose Thornton is a freelance cultural critic and arts journalist originally hailing from Chicago who now lives in an artists’ colony in Bellows Falls. She can be reached at clara@inkblotcomplex.com, or through her Web site, clararosethornton.com.
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