…and the children shall inherit the land flowing with milk and honey
Water is our lifeblood: our bodies are made from it; our daily life depends on it; our spirits draw nourishment from it. In Michigan, we are surrounded by water; it defines who we are as a state and as a people. Yet, it seems, we are the first to take our water for granted. Water has always played an important part in my life, yet it has only been in the last few years that water has asserted its important presence in my art. Through several installation/performances in the last several years, I have become seduced by all aspects of water: as a necessity, as a luxury, as a commodity, as part of spirituality
…and the children shall inherit the land flowing with milk and honey… deals with water, the essence of life, on many levels. Water is a spiritual as well as a physical medium that sustains and nurtures all the inhabitants (past, present and future) of this fragile earth. It is life, always touching even when the cool, wet, life-blood is not felt upon our skin. Our ancestral memory and myth whisper to us the power and sacredness of water. It tells us we are born of water and we are carrying into the afterlife upon water. We are cleansed by emersion in water. Water is a vehicle of spiritual transformation.
These ripples of water sustaining our body spirit and soul are often unseen, unacknowledged or worse, ignored. We now bottle and sell our water with barely a second thought. Ice Mountain becomes the symbol of our culture’s commoditization of our life-blood. Industry extracts, contains and exports spring and glacial water out of Michigan’s (our earth’s) aquifers (subsidized by the State). We are connected. The draining of irreplaceable glacial water from our earth is the syringe withdrawing our body’s sustaining life-blood. Today’s political aspects of water are undeniable and inseparable from the social and spiritual attributes. Michigan’s water is being pumped and sold at the expense of the natural environment: rivers and wells run dry, wildlife habitats, destroyed, yet pumping goes on, unimpeded, until the aquifers go dry and industry moves on, leaving our future generations with only a memory of the water that once was… and our children shall inherit…
--Jjenna Hupp Andrews
Water is our lifeblood: our bodies are made from it; our daily life depends on it; our spirits draw nourishment from it. In Michigan, we are surrounded by water; it defines who we are as a state and as a people. Yet, it seems, we are the first to take our water for granted. Water has always played an important part in my life, yet it has only been in the last few years that water has asserted its important presence in my art. Through several installation/performances in the last several years, I have become seduced by all aspects of water: as a necessity, as a luxury, as a commodity, as part of spirituality
…and the children shall inherit the land flowing with milk and honey… deals with water, the essence of life, on many levels. Water is a spiritual as well as a physical medium that sustains and nurtures all the inhabitants (past, present and future) of this fragile earth. It is life, always touching even when the cool, wet, life-blood is not felt upon our skin. Our ancestral memory and myth whisper to us the power and sacredness of water. It tells us we are born of water and we are carrying into the afterlife upon water. We are cleansed by emersion in water. Water is a vehicle of spiritual transformation.
These ripples of water sustaining our body spirit and soul are often unseen, unacknowledged or worse, ignored. We now bottle and sell our water with barely a second thought. Ice Mountain becomes the symbol of our culture’s commoditization of our life-blood. Industry extracts, contains and exports spring and glacial water out of Michigan’s (our earth’s) aquifers (subsidized by the State). We are connected. The draining of irreplaceable glacial water from our earth is the syringe withdrawing our body’s sustaining life-blood. Today’s political aspects of water are undeniable and inseparable from the social and spiritual attributes. Michigan’s water is being pumped and sold at the expense of the natural environment: rivers and wells run dry, wildlife habitats, destroyed, yet pumping goes on, unimpeded, until the aquifers go dry and industry moves on, leaving our future generations with only a memory of the water that once was… and our children shall inherit…
--Jjenna Hupp Andrews
