Fluid pathways dance along the floor, shaping the entrance to a tapestry of intertwining stories — a display of community and movement and power. It’s a world flowing around both the simple and the complex, a world connected through water. 

The show at Oregon State University’s Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, also known as PRAx, is sparking conversations on watersheds. The Stirek Gallery’s first contemporary art exhibit, How to Carry Water, highlights the work of 14 cross-disciplinary artists. It continues through Dec. 21, with an artist’s talk Wednesday, Nov. 13. Guided tours of the exhibit are available at 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The new display is the gallery’s second exhibit since PRAx opened in April, preceded by the historical exhibit Sonic Booms. Ashley Stull Meyers, chief curator of art, science, and technology at PRAx, expressed her excitement surrounding the current exhibit, noting “Oregon needs more contemporary art spaces.” 

The show, two years in the making, transforms questions surrounding water into an immersive dialogue for every person who sets foot inside. 

“We wanted to really explore not only the scientific facets of a watershed and its topology, but also the deeply human stories about what it is to be a person that lives near a creek or a lake,” said Stull Meyers. “A lot of our cultures and communities are shaped by our proximity to a local or regional watershed.”

She explained that a watershed consists of the different ecosystems that collect water and eventually feed back into the ocean, including rivers, streams, and creeks. The exhibit was designed to be approachable for individuals with no previous knowledge of the topic. 

Stull Meyers combined her extensive art curation experience with the in-depth historical watershed research of her colleague Kelly Bosworth, OSU assistant professor of public history and ethnomusicology. The pair joined forces to identify artists who would bring the topic to life. Stull Meyers knew some of the artists through years of curation; they approached others after stumbling across their works. 

“We had a lot of conversations first about what was most interesting to each of us,” said Bosworth. “Then we put together a list of people. We kind of just started bouncing back and forth work that inspired us in both of our disciplines. So, I was sending her work in public history and she was sending me work in contemporary art.”

Half of the 14 artists created new works specifically for the show. The rest submitted pre-existing pieces, with customized elements designed to better display them within the space. 

The works vary from paintings to videos to reclaimed debris, all sharing the consistent thread of how water affects each of us – often more than we may admit or acknowledge. 

Entering the exhibit, the first thing one sees is a collection of leaves, butterfly wings, papers, and rocks displayed on a podium atop a wooden table – pocket-sized pieces on a four-dimensional plane. Artist Sean McFarland calls this sculpture [alluvial fan, strange attractor, Mono Basin (archive)], taking elements from a larger piece and adding new ones specifically for the PRAx show. 

The work revolves around the Mono Lake watershed in the eastern Sierra Nevada, near where McFarland’s family lives. Over the years, McFarland has explored the ongoing ecological effect of moving the water into other regions of California, a destructive choice made by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the early 20th century. 

Traditionally favoring photography, McFarland wanted to explore the topic using more tangible media. Looking for new ways to feel closer to the spaces he documents, he settled on a collection of small items that could be found around the watershed. “I wanted to make artwork that actually felt like I was going on a walk,” he said. 

He used the example of picking up a rock during a walk and placing it in a pocket, only to forget about it. When the rock is rediscovered the next day, McFarland said, something significant happens. “You hold that rock in your hand, and the image that it conjures up in your mind is so much more rich than any visual picture that you could have made of that space,” he said.

Many of the items displayed on the table are scans of objects, printed with inkjet printers and cut down to size. For other items, McFarland found realistic drawings of geographically appropriate species and painted them. 

This micro-display contrasts with the wall of photographs beside it, documenting the large landscapes surrounding the Mono Lake watershed. Some images are printed in cyanotype, other smaller images are framed. Still others resemble the “ghost” of an image: the dust of native plants stuck to pieces of tape. 

This juxtaposition between small and large components sets the tone for the remainder of the exhibit. 

A winding table fills the center of the room. One of the pre-existing works within the display, Carolina Caycedo’s Serpent River Book is a fold-out map featuring rivers and how humans interact with them. Specifically designed for the PRAx space, the wooden table was built to accommodate the accordion pages fully unfolded. The book was contributed from the University of Oregon’s special collections. 

Beyond this central piece, a vibrant, sparkling painting winds along the wall. Created during the pandemic, Susan Murrell’s if water had its way finally found its rightful opportunity to be enjoyed by a well-attended audience. 

Murrell said she stumbled across the inspiration for the name while reading Anthony Doerr’s novel About Grace, in which the author ponders what would happen if water had a sense of agency. Would it wear down all the mountains? Would we stand in waist-deep water?

“It became a metaphor in my mind,” said Murrell. “If we actually achieved some sort of peace or equanimity or utopia, would it be … human nature to create conflict, to create something to push against?”

The piece is a liquid array of blues, greens, browns, and other natural hues, blending together like currents of a river. Connected paper panels along the wall construct flowing waterways, delicately formed by mixing watercolor paints. This choice reflected the natural movement of sediment, Murrell said, mimicking water’s interaction with both gravity and evaporation. The dancing colors fall down like a waterfall, with glittering patterns of hand-poured sand extending the piece onto the floor. 

Murrell is an abstract artist who also considers herself a landscape painter. Fascinated by aerial views, she experiments with the human tendency to piece together an understanding of larger objects by observing smaller details.

“We have all these misconceptions, and it’s because we have limitations in terms of our senses,” she said. “So we’ve developed visual languages that help us kind of grasp these things, to take the pieces that we can see to create an understanding.” 

She noted that technology has helped us accomplish this to an even greater extent, comparing elements of her pieces to Google maps and weather patterns. 

Including a painting in the exhibit was important, Stull Meyers and Bosworth said, noting that visitors often asked to see paintings when coming to a contemporary display.

“I wanted to give people a really different, multidimensional take on what a painting can be and look like,” said Stull Meyers. “And so I was really grateful that Susan was willing to give us this one. She was here with cups of sand sitting on the floor with knee pads, pouring it all out in patterns.”

Contrasting with Murrell’s meandering, fluid painting is a pile of rock and debris toward the back of the room.

Artist Annelia Hillman collected the materials – rubble found in the Klamath River after dam removal fueled by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation and other organizations – transforming the waste from these waters into a statement. The piece comes out of the United States’ first effort to restore natural salmon runs in Oregon rivers and is symbolic of the waters returning to their freely flowing state. 

“This one I feel like means a lot to me, as someone who cares about undamming,” said Bosworth. “Watching the artist bring her family, her daughter, her best friend, carrying these rocks in… Just the literal weight of art making, I guess.”

Behind the wall of rubble hides a dimly lit room filled with beanbag chairs and a large screen. The space is closed off from the rest of the exhibit to allow viewers to “opt-in” to the experience, according to Stull Meyers. 

A looped film reveals a performance-art piece of 150 people floating on Lake Michigan. The performers peacefully recline in inner tubes connected by a rope as the warm sunshine glistens along the surface of the water’s gentle waves.  

This serene image is a stark contrast to the reality of the subject matter: Commentary explains an act of racial violence that occurred in that same location 100 years prior. 

A line in the water marked the area where Blacks were permitted to swim. When a 17-year-old Black youth unknowingly floated over the line, he was stoned to death by a group of white swimmers. The piece considers the reality of how water moves people, both physically and emotionally. Artist Jefferson Pinder will give a talk on the story of float at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 13, in the Toomey Lobby.

Navigating the gallery of How to Carry Water, visitors continue to encounter layers of weight contrasted with the lightness of floating, intertwining the theme of our human relationship with water. It is a space that should be given time to fully soak in, a space to reflect and enjoy. 

“The same way a watershed is immense and intimate and interconnected,” said Bosworth, “I hope these works feel that way, too.”