In 2020, as I looked through my photographs, I realized how many were of water – the sea, the creeks, the rain, the droplets, the clouds, the snow, the ice – all the forms of water I saw as I walked in the woods, in my garden, and by the sea. I was drawn to think more deeply about water, to research water, to pray over water. From this, a new form emerged: these pieces incorporate the beautiful photographs, but changed, and made strange by manipulating the images. All but one started with my own photograph, most taken close to home in Roberts Creek. I’ve added text, including original poems and poem fragments, prayers, quotes, sayings, and wiki words and images (wikis are fragments of crowd-sourced knowledge from the Internet). The 36 images are printed on 60 pound Polar Matte paper and mounted under glass on cedar, cedar which was first blessed and then milled from trees on our lot in Roberts Creek.

The objective of this process of printing, changing, adding words, is to get first me, and then others, to stop and think, think about water in a new way, to appreciate it as the magical, amazing, wondrous thing it is. Each image is a thought, a fragment, but the whole is something more, something that I hope will be emergent, greater than the parts. The subject of water is timely as we face disruptions in our water supply, as we can no longer take for granted that water will be the quiet, unacknowledged, useful thing that is just there for us. But the subject also takes us deeply into the source of life, to questions of what life is.