The exhibit is open 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, March 22-29.
Water Imbalance is a curated exhibition planned for the Balance-Unbalance 2015 conference at the Arizona State University Tempe Campus.
Featuring the work of:
Kim Abeles
Sukey Bryan
Betsy Damon
Danielle Eubank
J.J. L’Heureux
Sandra Mueller
Melissa Reischman
Eco Art Collective
Curated by Sandra Mueller and Danielle Eubank
As the majority of the world’s population, it is incumbent upon women to be guardians of the future. We need to look after our people, our natural environment, and our water. Water is a shared resource amongst all people. It is our provider – for sustenance, fishing, farming and regulation of the earth’s climate. This is an exhibition that makes a statement about the unifying preciousness of water by documenting it all over the world with paintings, photography, mixed media, and installations by leading environmental women artists.
The conceptual theme of the exhibition addresses the consequences of the human footprint globally by looking at the imbalance of the availability and cleanliness of water. We have specifically examined water scarcity, cleanliness, access, expanding deserts, urban engagement, climate change and diminishing glaciers that all reflect an unworkable imbalance. Artists included a written statement addressing water imbalance. For the visual theme, emphasis is on the view of water from a geographical perspective as well as a state of mind. – Danielle Eubank, March 2015
Sandra Mueller
Sandra Mueller is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer who has been on a lifelong journey of social concern and creative expression. She spent much of the 1990s working on the cutting edge of interactive media before returning to make her own visual art and launch the BeARTrageous Creativity Workshops for Women. Mueller serves on the Women's Caucus for Art national board and as a strategic advisor for A Window Between Worlds. Her colorful abstract paintings and photographs have been shown broadly throughout the Pacific Rim region.
Danielle Eubank
Danielle Eubank is a painter interested in exploring the relationship between abstraction and realism. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2014-15. Danielle Eubank is an expedition artist in pursuit of painting all of the major bodies of water in the world. She is beginning by painting all of Earth’s oceans. She sailed aboard the barquentine tall ship, The Antigua, on an expedition to the High Arctic in Autumn 2014. She was an Expedition Artist on the Phoenicia, a replica 600 B.C. Phoenician vessel that circumnavigated Africa and was the Expedition Artist on the Borobudur Ship, a replica of an 8th century Indonesian boat that sailed around the African continent.
Waste Water
Kristian Derek Ball
As unavoidable as it is, water is something that we as humans have to waste to some degree. But we still have options on how we approach, view and interact with our water-related activities.
The idea behind this new installation is to raise a hyper-awareness of the process of water draining away from us during its usage. The sonic experience of listening to the phenomenon of water in action and its interfacing with those using it, can lead us into this mode of listening which may juxtapose traditional symbolic references.
The Human Delta
Rachel Mayeri
A delta is a place where a river meets another body of water. A river carries sediment that leaves a triangular pattern where the two bodies of water intersperse. Human bodies are nutrient-rich water and sediment transportation systems. The Human Delta occurs at the toilet, an effluence of millions of gallons of sediment-rich water, which mixes with rivers, aquifers, bays, land, and the ocean.
Environmentalists are dealing with the human delta as toxic concentrations of bacteria, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals in partially treated wastewater routinely pollute waterways. Some chemicals which course through human bodies--heart medicine, antibiotics, estrogen--may adversely affect fish populations and their habitats. Yet, the chemicals which are naturally produced in urine--nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium--rather than be construed as waste or pollution, can be used as important nutrients for the soil in which plants grow. Agrobusiness uses fertilizers derived from fossil fuels and mined from limited reserves, contributing to global warming. A more sustainable solution would be to recycle human urine, treat it, and use it as fertilizer, linking the Human Delta back to the ecological cycle productively, rather than destructively.
The Human Delta is an art-science project intended to increase public awareness about the human "waste" at its point of departure: the bathroom. A series of posters are installed in conference bathrooms, and are available for distribution. Toilets are interstitial, potentially contemplative spaces, which underscore the hidden, segregated, white-tiled, and taboo nature of the subject.
One poster is about the flow of pharmaceuticals from human bodies into a river delta. Informed by scientific research which has found concentrations of caffeine in the Puget Sound, the poster depicts the Starbucks logo as a flow of caffeine, hormones, antibiotics, and medicines entering and leaving the human body, and cycling back as disturbed (caffeinated, aggressive, effeminate) fish. Another poster is about the potential of urine as a fertilizer. It depicts a farmer fountain: a stream of water pours forth from kidneys and bladder, fertilizing a field of corn. Text on the poster reads: "urine is fertilizer" / "nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium."
