The Woman Under the Water
This body of work explores fairy tale, ecology, and healing. My studio practice for the last few years has started with almost daily walks along the San Antonio River. I found myself getting to know her, her cycles, the wildness she displayed before a rainstorm, the hum of new bugs in the spring, her sparse silence on cold days…I could hear her screaming during last summer’s 110 degree days. Yet, she continues–her long hair strung with trash and algae after a heavy rain. Those that feel her irritation, endlessly comb out the bottles, cigarette butts and Styrofoam trying to comfort her. Through it she continues to flow, to grow, to rage, to live: providing habit and nourishment to everything around her. Gentle species like muscles slowly return to live in her gills. Lush trees grow and create shade for her skin. She has the ability to heal quickly, if we help her, if we give her time. Fish could fill her veins with sparkling scales again, her eyes could clear. I feel her retreating completely from certain parts of the river, too dirty and filled with poison she couldn’t breathe. But on stormy days, when hail falls from the sky the size of baseballs, I hear her screaming again. She is angry, powerful, and destructive. I look around to see if other people can hear her and are scared as well.
It is not difficult to predict how a culture whose practices have strangled, used, neglected and endangered the Earth would then treat those with less power in the population. As a woman and a feminist I see this acutely and most knowledgeably in the treatment of women, but these violent practices have veined out in all directions, equally destructive.
The masks, photography and sculpture in this exhibition seek to tie women to the inherent power and wisdom of the natural world in a mutually empowering symbiosis. As we take care to learn her lessons, to clean her hair, to feed her, to listen and tell her stories; we in turn learn her lessons of resilience, growth and rage.