Art Exhibits
TIDES is a video and photographic installation and accompanying performances by media artist Ian Winters, exploring the rapidly changing tidelands of San Francisco Bay and the neighborhoods soon likely to be lost under rising waters. This 3 channel video and 6 channel sound installation remounts the March 2020 premiere at SFArtsED Gallery at Minnesota St. Project, which was delayed by Covid in 2020.
The TIDES project encompasses video installations and photographic prints by Winters, with a new sound score by composer Wayne Vitale, and a live performance (at a date to be determined) with music by Brian Baumbusch. This single channel video adaptation of TIDES reframes Winters’ multi- channel video installation as a left / right split screen, along with hints of the floor and map projections and prints seen in the gallery.
Built in 24 sections, the video and music echo our historic connection to the tides, and follow three full cycles of the Bay’s twice daily tide cycle with the tidal level (rising, full, falling, slack) as fundamental organizing principle.
Wholly H2O Zone: Art In Nature
The Wholly H2O Zone at Art in Nature Festival, Sept 2015, Oakland CA
The Wholly H2O Zone was a collaboration between Samavesha/Art in Nature and Wholly H2O.
The water-related arts and installations offered a multifaceted experience with the element of water, one of the most mysterious and complex elements on earth. Rather than emphasizing the need to save water and offering direct strategies for the drought, the zone’s goal was to create awareness and provide a way of perceiving water in different ways.
Water is something we grew up with so it’s out of our awareness; it’s just there. So what we’re trying to do is have people look at this element and how precious it is. (no space between this and quote above) Laura Inserra, creative director for Art in Nature Festival
The opportunities for this perception shift came from many different angles, including poetry, visual art installations, dance and music.
What River are You Made of?
The fragile relationship between San Francisco Bay Area residents and their water supply was heightened by the recent events of the Rim Fire that tore through the protected watershed in and around Yosemite that provides the Bay Area with much of its water. Wholly H2O
in partnership with Sherwood Gallery has assembled a provocative group of 17 artists working to address the environmental issues surrounding this interrelationship.
The two-month exhibit exposed the energy and vitality of this watershed and water system before and during and after the Rim Fire. The stories and impressions exhibited used the fire as a point of reference but extended deeper into the human relationship with this watershed and the causal relationships behind environmental disasters. The show was inspired at times by the tragic beauty of the natural landscape engulfed in flames and its people reeling in the fire’s path and aftermath. Other moments the show drew us in to the urban side of the water system sharing impressions where this water is used by 3 million of the urban residents in the Bay Area.
Standing with the Watershed
This show presented 20+ artists’ interpretations of our Tuolumne River, as well as the 4-1-1 on the river itself. The artists wove a story about the Tuolumne on the molecular, infrastructure and end-use levels through their 2D, 3D, digital, and mixed media artwork.
While the Tuolumne River flows out of the tall peaks of the Sierra Nevada straight to the faucets of three million water users in the San Francisco Bay Area, many don’t know its name and relation to them. The Tuolumne River provides both water and electricity to Turlock, Modesto, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
What else lies hidden from our consciousness about this stunning river as it flows below Bay Area urban neighborhoods, enters our bodies, passes on into the landscape or sewers? What ripples does this river make below us, around us and inside of us? How does this river move through the Bay Area? How are we using it? And what does this life force need from us, to be purely available to us?
Dr. Elizabeth Dougherty, Founder and Director of Wholly H2O, curated this show.
Read about The Tuolumne River