Columns, Channels, Flutes and Flumes
I have been interested in the directed movement of water, the structures and mechanisms that make it possible and the ramifications of that movement. Where water goes, people go. It is nowhere more apparent than in the open landscape of the Southwest, where I have spent numerous years of my life. Aqueducts that funnel water from rural to urban areas often do so at the expense of those rural communities. Large operations that irrigate or newly subdivided land can draw down groundwater or surface water levels, leaving residents and wildlife in the surrounding areas compromised. With reallocations of water come issues of the disappearance of one way of life to support another, and issues related to the environmental and visual impact of these built elements. Entitlement, privilege, deprivation and denial of access are surfacing as important considerations.
Incorporating the fluid qualities of light in combination with the abstracted and fragmented components of irrigation ditches, sluices, reservoirs and other architectures of resource transport and storage, I invite the viewer to reflect upon the greater implications of usage practices.
