Well the Water Works ll show turned out to be a lot more than I was really expecting. What a fun weekend. We drove up on Friday night and in the morning went to see how my piece "The Life Aquatic #4 " looked. It was in the Ojai arts center not the Porch Gallery, as they had so much work it had to spill out to another space, it was in a good location and the lighting made it look great. We drove over to the "Farmer and the Cook" for a green smoothie and a look at one of the three sculptures in the show.
Right before the opening, there was a panel discussion with several of the artists, the show's, juror/curator Juri Koll ( to be clear there were in total, 4 jurors for the show, Heather Stobo, Lisa Casoni and Peter Frank) , an art critic ,and a local organic farmer. Interestingly the only person who talked about water as is relates to the human body was Wendy Osher. One of her pieces for the show was a collection of crocheted breasts made out of plastic bags by women around the world, She talked about how toxins are now present in most women's breast milk, because of the pollution, we humans have pumped into the planet. The critic talked about water as a Jungian metaphor for emotion and the men mostly about how this water crisis is affecting the landscape. The farmer Johnny Fonteyn ,talked most interestingly about the challenges of farming in a drought. The next day we went on a tour of the area he farms ,at the Bessant school, where he cultivates 5 acres. It was a fascinating tour and made me sad, we do not live closer, so we could get a box of produce every week.
The work in the show was of a consistently high standard , I feel as though I have found my peers. The Water Works 1 show was originally conceived as a show about mediums that utilize water, so a lot of water colors. This show has expanded the idea, so some depictions of water , some literal ,some not. There were a lot of landscape photographs and some paintings and drawings of the effects of the drought on the earth . The work was varied and each artist seemed to have taken an individual approach to the subject . The night before the opening I was thinking about my piece and what I would say about it. I realized that as well as the work showing the fourth chakra representing a part of the body, the heart, that in the Mother Earth's Chakra system the fourth chakra represents the crust of the planet, we live on , so the forests and mountains and also the oceans. As we humans are 67% water, the direct link with our bodies and the planet is clear. My work so often deals with the microcosm and the macrocosm.
All in all a wonderful weekend, grateful to be included in such a prestigious show and to feel as though I am a part of the Los Angeles art world. The photos below are of me on the the porch of the Porch Gallery in Ojai and me in front of my piece, you can see how good the lighting was on my work.
