A Song To The Water From A Loving Child
3- Channel Synchronous Loop Video Installation

Lake Erie found objects, sand, soil, salt, annuity cloth, wood
Burchfield Penny Art Center, Buffalo, NY  2019-2020

​

A Song to the Water From a Loving Child is an exploration of and inquiry into the relationship between body, power and water. It is an attempt to both articulate and interrogate relationships to and responsibilities for creation as well as a direct line of inquiry into the relationship of power to that which makes all life possible.

A Song to the Water From a Loving Child arises from a sweet moment with the artist’s child who, upon throwing stones, pebbles and what ever they could grab into the water, declared, “it’s beautiful music! A song for the water!”.

This piece is my response to this loving child. A moment of hard truth. A moment where we know gratitude is not enough.

Water is the lifeline for Dó:so:wë:h, currently known as Buffalo, NY. Since time immemorial, before the arrival of Europeans, through ungrateful industrialization and into today the water, the Great Lakes, her rivers streams and creeks, have sustained this place currently known as Buffalo, NY and many communities along these fresh water lifelines. Through reservoirs of land theft and projects eagerly backed by the Niagara River Power Authority, to the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, we witnessed not only the loss of water we could touch, drink, eat from, but thousands of acres of land. Rivers turned to rivers of fire, so toxic they burned. These waters make life possible. And what do we have left to give her but our gratitude and apologies and songs?

​