adventures in photographing water

Jenn has been digging into the photography the past few weeks and has come up with some pretty interesting stuff.  This series with water, ripples and smoke is especially evocative.  Feels primordial, volcanic, atmospheric.  Could relate well to themes I'm working out with the stonework...

Currents

CURRENTS 

Inhale.

The ribbon pathway echoes
a thin blue seam, a life raft
for a green and thirsty city
with stones full of stories
the glacial melody remains
in oak tree whispers
in songs slipping over sky-colored wings
living resonance humming through life’s blue vein
this city on the Sound bears fruit
when, at last, the soft, cool kiss arrives
in iridescent waves, water for a fresh born town
taking its first breath.

Exhale.

Jennifer Chushcoff  

thoughts on text/image for flow

In terms of textual interventions in flow, here’s some thoughts on possible approaches…

1. the poem/haiku/text is short but resonant on many levels

2. typeface reinforces message/metaphor

3. text appears only with rain/moisture

4. opportunities for text include blue tree, birdhouses, boulders & images

5. piece could be read in multiple ways & different orders 

meeting with Water Flume Line Trail artists

Today Project Manager Naomi Strom-Avila and I met with Curtis Ashby, Tiffany Hammonds and Anthony Duenas at the site for their murals along the Water Line Flume Trail.  We had a chance to discuss themes, techniques and inspiration for the overall approach to each of their projects as we walked along the barrier wall where they'll paint.  Such youth and enthusiasm is contagious.

Anthony contemplating 340' of concrete canvas...!

inclusion of text/poetry

The layering in of ‘invisible poetry’ (words that only appear when wet) as a sort of stream correlates to some of my first ideas about the project.  At one point I contemplated the incorporation of stone benches along the trail engraved with some sort of poetic meditation on water, natural life cycles, the historic flume & city water system. Would’ve gone that way if they hadn’t already installed wooden benches along the trail (and I didn’t have 8 other ideas).

This may present an opportunity to potentially bind the 4 components of the overall project (flow). 

What if each subproject (free, fly, flow, flume) had some iconic language running through it as one poetic statement about the interconnected of life & water?  I’m thinking here of something relatively short yet not prosaic.  Extremely allusive and metaphoric.  Really well-chosen words that flow. 

"For we, we have taken our sheet upon her stones where we have hanged our hearts in her trees; and we list, as she bibs us by the waters of babbling.” —Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake 

water

Water

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam. 

Pablo Neruda

flow: exploring a dialog in water

The image of where I started conceptually (see below).  The sculpture/image dialog between flume & flow seems like it should be fairly simple and direct…and to that end, a singular iconic flowing image seems appropriate (also probably a bit easier to photographically set up and achieve as a single image that could be cut into 4-5 panels…though it would be a HUGE image, digitally speaking).  

The main requirements here are having the water images fill the panels as a blue color field.  So there’ll be no white background within the border.  I think I’d also steer clear of ice (though other states such as the examples provided…droplets, waves, turbulence, etc & gradations of blueness could be interesting).  Otherwise it would be interesting to explore the possibilities involved with ‘personalities or portraits of water’ as a set of 4 images of water in various states.  It would be great if there were also a deeper subtext as it relates to water treatment, the historic water flume, purity of water, water as life, etc.  Particularly if it wove as a visual narrative in a non-literal iconic minimalistic way.  On the other hand, it could just overburden the elegance of the basic idea.