For Claire, the piece symbolizes the immense amount of words and thoughts that go into simple things like water, she said. The element in all its forms complicated, destructive and beautiful provides a unifying element for "H2O: Film on Water," an exhibition hosted by four galleries across the New Hampshire-Vermont area. The Newport Mill in Newport Mill, N.H. serves as the flagship gallery for the exhibition.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Greater Valley Arts Center partnered with Water for People, a non-profit organization that works to provide clean water in developing countries by creating local water sanitation facilities. As a result, much of the artwork in the exhibition focuses on the effects of climate change, particularly for those who have trouble accessing clean water.
"Big Water," for example, incorporates more than 600,000 words about the global water crisis, taken from writings by scientists, journalists, individuals, lawyers, researchers, and policymakers.
"What's become fascinating to me ... is the enormity of the amount of words and the amount of time, energy and resources that people put into this issue," Claire said. "Sometimes I feel like it shows this sense that we really need to make a change."
Claire's piece successfully incorporates meaning that is relevant to a contemporary crisis while still maintaining a beautiful artistic quality that justifies its position as a piece of art amongst the others on display. Like a Monet, the long-distance view of the instillation depicts the play of light on the surface of a shallow blue pool, whereas a close look at the piece reveals thousands of minutely detailed words.
"When you get up close you encounter the abstraction of the pixels and you get this other element, which is text," Claire said. "That was a very important part of this piece from the start, because the text initiated the piece."
While many works' subject matters and the colors lend themselves to a tranquil exhibit, the deep thematic aspects of the exhibition are not lost.
"The juxtaposition of the heaviness of the topic with the beauty and the lightness of the works is really fascinating," Claire said.
Daniel Wheeler's photographs, showing at The Newport Mill, also focus on the play of water, but places an emphasis on the visual effects created by its disruption. Unlike the smooth surfaces in Claire's panels, Wheeler's black and white pieces depict water ripples created by his own breath underneath the surface. Through the ripples, the viewer can glimpse the landscape of a garden.
"I'm taking these pictures from the inside of a swimming pool, so there's a kind of performance to it," Wheeler said. "Each time I take an image there's a descent into the water...I'm shooting through the water that's been disturbed through by descent, and I'm also shooting through the breath that I'm letting out."
Wheeler said that his earlier sculpture work inspired the photographs, noting in particular the idea shooting from residential pools in an otherwise desert-like Los Angeles, Calif.
"It's a very strange landscape that exists in these backyards it's like a little fake garden," he said. "Sometimes I'm not actually using permission, so you may see a guy in a wetsuit running across your yard, holding a camera, and jumping into your pool that could be me."
"H20: Film on Water" opens August 6th. The Newport Mill and Spheris, along with The Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, Vt., and Great River Arts in Bellows Falls, Vt., will show works from almost one hundred artists until November 7th. All four of the galleries are currently open to the public.
