WATER BOOKS  (Alps Art Academy, June 28- July 8, 2018, Tenna, Switzerland.)  Acrylic and Collected Water.

This temporary installation links three locations—Tenna’s Church, the local river (Rabiusa), and the sea (Atlantic Ocean).

These books are part of a water library I’m developing, and they are meant to be held and opened.  While in residence in the small alpine village of Tenna, I made one book of the local river, and one of the river’s final destination. With these objects I’m interested in thinking about global water circulation, the meaning of place, the emotional connections we develop with particular bodies of water, and the knowledge & poetry embedded in material, as opposed to text.

Over the course of ten days, I experimented with various sites where the books could be encountered, and felt Tenna’s church was an ideal contemplative place where people might sit and spend time with these objects.  The village churches throughout the region are always open, so people are free to enter at any time.  There’s also a connection between water and spirituality that interested me, and I thought of this passage:  “All rivers flow into the sea, but the sea is never full; one by one the rivers return to their source.”  Eccles. 1:7   

The water books remained in the church for three days, including a Sunday mass and the vernissage opening of Art Safiental.