Elise Richman | elisemariarichman@gmail.com
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
Lao-Tze
A defining feature of our planet today is not simply the presence of water but the simultaneous existence of water in all its possisble states - vapor, liquid, ice - and its contiguous movement between air, sea, and lands. Over time, life became intertwined with the physics that makes this flux possible.
Ferris Jabr, Becoming Earth
My visual art practice engages with the ways of water and particular waterways, translating water’s emotive, phemomenal, and empirical attributes. I’m especially driven by concern for salmon and ecological systems in the Columbia and Snake River basins. These andadromous fish travel from high mountain streams through dammed rivers to the Pacific Ocean and then make this epic journey in reverse.
Distinct salmon species have co-evolved with individual natal streams where they instinctively return to spawn and die. Snake River salmon absorb nutrients from the Pacific Ocean and nourish these birth place ecosystems, hundreds of miles inland and thousands of feet in altitude. Robert McFarlane writes that, “each river is differently spirited and differently tongued—and so must be differently honoured.” Salmon’s co-evolution with natal streams embodies and exemplifies the diversity of river vitality and ecologies.