For me,
drawing is about observation and discovery, recording with marks on
paper, the language of my environment. With my feet in the New Haven
River, my eyes follow the layered currents flowing and spiraling along
a ledge as if in accord with some intelligent, regulating force. As
I gaze upon it, this visible movement, experienced as the language of
water, directs my course of thought, evoking intuitions and sensations.
With this deepening relationship develops an understanding and reverence
for the complex set of relationships between water, the surrounding
life forms and its communities.
The language
of water became evident one day when I slipped a large sheet of watercolor
paper into a shallow section of the New Haven near my home. On the paper
a play of moving shadows appeared as if some kind of communication.
Immediately I recognized these lines as a visual language, a universal
expression of water.
“Et
l’eau repondit” drawings are unconventional in that they
are created in bodies of water recording its lexicon with a lithography
crayon. They are an “entering” into the landscape whose
colors, shapes and textures offer a sense of place. Many large and small
drawings of related material have accumulated over the four years of
this artist/poet collaboration taking on a liquid quality of its own.
Collaborating
with poet Guy Jean has offered new insights into the play of word and
image and the endless creativity to be found in the presence of a mountain
river and an urban stream.
The many
great rivers I’ve seen, from the Mississippi to the Blue Nile,
and the smaller rivers, streams and creeks, all inspire respect and
invite me to quietly observe, to leave an offering or make a drawing.
Each has left me with the thought that we, too, are the river, carving
our meandering path through the landscape of soul to some great ocean
that contains us all.
Janet
Fredericks
March 14, 2006
Two
short films on Being in Water and Et l’eau repondit
Two
Poems by Guy Jean
Water
washes over my words
carrying perhaps
the affection they hold.
How
would I know?
To the impatient poet
the crystal clear water reveals
only rocks and pebbles.
Words
of love leave quickly
our eager ears.
Without
rest the river caresses
the words etched in earth
she hears the silent syllables
keeps alive the buried stories.
Tomorrow
I’ll write incense words
offered slowly
words given to the dying
seeking no response.
Guy
Jean
(translated from French by Thomas Verner)
I shall
fashion words.
The
"Bay of Chaleurs" fishermen call their boats:
poc-a-poc, poc-a-poc, poc-a-poc
the Quechua name birds by the sound of their song:
klis, klis, klis, ch’ok, ch’ok, ch’ok*
so then
I’ll call your speech flowing on rocks and pebbles:
reude, reude
rosh-sh-sh-glou-glou
euch’-gluglu.
The
movements of your lips
an unknown language
teach my lips to shape sounds I’ve never said.
Your
many-storied words hold the beginnings that human
long to hear.
.
We are
deaf to your innocence
mother tongue of all tongues.
I shall fashion words.
*Humberto
Ak’abal, Cantos de pajaros.
Guy
Jean
(translated from French by Thomas Verner)
BEING
IN WATER/ Water Chronicles
Janet
Fredericks and Dona Seegers
n
2001 a unique correspondence developed as two artists from Vermont
and Maine were drawn into a dialogue with water. Approaching local
lakes, streams and ocean they discovered a curious language of ripples,
spirals and bubbles when the paper was submerged in these waters.
The artists spontaneously responded to the ever-moving currents, mysterious
depths, rain, snow, ice and dew recording observations as drawings
and writing on large sheets of watercolor paper. These were dried
and then mailed back and forth between Maine and Vermont re-submerged
and chronicled through drawing, painting and photography. Great appreciation
and awareness has come about in the reverent act of observing water.
This body of work has emerged out of a deep respect and love for water
and the Supreme Being it is. That water has consciousness is no surprise
to us. Water connects us with all of life…water is life.
A
Dream as told to Dona Seegers
As
I may have told you, I have been doing a lot of drawing of water
and reading this wonderful book about it. So, last night I asked,
as I sometimes do, for a dream about water. And this is the amazing
dream that came to me...In the dream I am a dark, deep body of water
with a swift current, eddies and vortices.
I
become aware of the spiraling energy of these eddies and realize
that I am in it and of it. At one point I see the spiraling moving
up (in the center?) and down on the outside and I see how it is
like the relationship of two people. I wanted to stay in, being
the river, as it was deeply relaxing and healing.
Janet
Fredericks' work expresses continuing fascination with water, and
the complexities of its "language". Her paintings and drawings
offer a visual insight into water, its relationship to what holds
it and the life that infuses it. Mysterious and sensory, Fredericks’
drawings and paintings are at once maps, conversations and prayers
linking the observer to a deeper communion, a reverent awareness of
the history of water as a conduit and amplifier of intuition, a repository
of ever changing but expanding memories and markings, that help contain
and reveal the rituals and identities of the race.
Click
on any graphic for a larger image.
Drawing
in the New Haven River, Vermont. Summer (left) and Spring (right), 2006
Poet
Guy Jean in the New Haven River, 2006
Water
patterns on paper in the river
Looking
through water at submerged drawing
Drawing
in the New Haven River, winter
30’
drawing in water
Pages
from water journal
Water
patterns recorded in New Haven River
Water
patterns drawing
Installation
of drawings from Being in Water/Water Chronicles andEt l’eau repondit collaborations.
Exhibition at Green Mountain College, 2005
Installation
of Being in Water/Water Chronicles
and Et l’eau repondit collaborations.
Gallery Montcalm, Hull Gatineau, Quebec
n
2001 a unique correspondence developed as two artists from Vermont
and Maine were drawn into a dialogue with water. Approaching local
lakes, streams and ocean they discovered a curious language of ripples,
spirals and bubbles when the paper was submerged in these waters.
The artists spontaneously responded to the ever-moving currents, mysterious
depths, rain, snow, ice and dew recording observations as drawings
and writing on large sheets of watercolor paper. These were dried
and then mailed back and forth between Maine and Vermont re-submerged
and chronicled through drawing, painting and photography. Great appreciation
and awareness has come about in the reverent act of observing water.
This body of work has emerged out of a deep respect and love for water
and the Supreme Being it is. That water has consciousness is no surprise
to us. Water connects us with all of life…water is life.