Lao-Tze
A defining feature of our planet today is not simply the presence of water but the simultaneous existence of water in all its possisble states - vapor, liquid, ice - and its continuous movement between air, sea, and lands. Over time, life became intertwined with the physics that makes this flux possible.
Ferris Jabr, Becoming Earth
My visual art practice engages with the ways of water and particular waterways, translating water’s emotive, phemomenal, and empirical attributes. I’m especially driven by concern for salmon and ecological systems in the Columbia and Snake river basins in western North America. Many of the Columbia Basin’s anadromous fish travel from high mountain streams through dammed rivers to the Pacific Ocean and then make this epic journey in reverse.
Distinct salmon populations have co-evolved with individual natal streams where they instinctively return to spawn and die. Snake River salmon absorb nutrients from the Pacific Ocean and nourish the ecosystems of their birth place, up to 1,000 miles inland and up to 7,000 feet high in the Rocky Mountains. As Robert McFarlane writes, “each river is differently spirited and differently tongued—and so must be differently honoured.” The Pacific salmon’s co-evolution with natal streams embodies and exemplifies the diversity of river vitality and ecologies.