Becoming a River

Three works in Kamiyama, Japan

rice becomes a river

life becomes a river

again, life becomes a river

Statement on my work at Kamiyama Artist in Residence in 2007

A typhoon arrived in Kamiyama in one of the first weeks I was here. The sound of water, so persistent at regular times, erupted into a roar. First, the rain came in sporadic mists and bursts, between hot humid sun, and then it settled in, pounding on the roof and filling some buckets on the edge of the studio. On the way to the onsen, I looked out at a river high above where it had been. Before a crystalline blue, it was now a coffee colored, surging mass. The frogs, crabs and worms were out all over the road. At night the streams were roaring in the dark.
From the misty green, roaring room where Amagoi-no-taki sends the stream down the mountain, the water travels through curving paths, like the mountain roads in Kamiyama. It flows into fields where it irrigates the rice, through concrete culverts, under the highway, into Akui-gawa, and on downstream. This movement, from the waterfall to the crops, from the top of the mountain to the flowing river to water for washing and drinking, has been the source for each work I have made in Kamiyama.