Water - 2011 and some back story

Watershed - from 2010, exhibited at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2011 and at the Santa Fe Community Gallery in 2010

There's water from the Santa Fe River in a jar next to the mural.

The four images below are the tiny squares that rest on each corner of the cross form - the text reads:

 The Laws of Ecology

 All things are interconnected. Everything goes somewhere.

 There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Nature bats last.
by Ernest Callenbach

Another detail from the mural Watershed:

 These are cottonwood twigs that I collected and arranged. Cottonwoods drop whole beautiful twigs. Why? This is the water tree in the Southwest. Cottonwoods grow near water, encourage water, and are habitat to so many - a tree of life.

 A photo of returning the water I borrowed from the Santa Fe River, back to the river. It looks like there is a lot of water here...but this was actually a very large puddle. 2011 was a dry year.

The plastic bags are filled with water from our watershed and beyond (this was installed at the Community Gallery) - labeled: the Santa Fe River, Tesuque River, Rio Grande, snow melt and tap water.


Below: this is another event Dominique Mazeaud and I did together. This one with Elizabeth Wiseman. This was along the Orilla Canal in Albuquerque as part of the Land Arts events/exhibitions (a statewide project) in 2009.

In front of the 45 to 50 women is the wonderful singer Madi Sato. The buckets! I love the buckets...we had ropes attached to the handles and threw the buckets into the canal, drawing up water.

Here are a few images from the 2011 Santa Fe River event:

Below: Don Kennell's "Fish Out Of Water" installed next to the Santa Fe River - I curated a small outdoor exhibit of temporary art plus the Women in White did another water/river ritual.

Dominique Mazeuad listening to the river, to the Earth.

Last year, in 2010 (apologies for the lack of order here): I worked on the 350 (350.org) satellite event. This was coordinated by the Santa Fe Art Institute.  That dry meandering line is the Santa Fe River, see that little blue section? That's about 1,500 people holding large pieces of cardboard painted blue, blue tarps, blue sheet, blue blankets, anything blue...to put water back in our river.

 Here's a closer image.

Isn't that beautiful? There were also Buffalo dancers from San Juan Pueblo (they are to the right of the blue, standing above the river) and many elders, many children, families, people of all colours, ages and from many nations. For most this was the first time they had ever entered the Santa Fe River bed. Each person was utterly happy to be there, we were working with our Mother Earth and she with us. And we made something quite beyond our small selves, something inspired, beautiful and rich. We were the water, we were the river and she was us.

As Gary Snyder says, "Performance is currency in this Deep World. The Deep World being of course the thousand- million (billion) year old world of rock, soil, water air and all living beings...."