"Fair River Falling Banks"
(w/ Robin Hewlett)

stone from Tonle Sap River, Thailand
(photo R. Hewlett)

Pittsburgh-based artist Robin Hewlett and I began a collaboration through email and post in late 2005, soon after she took up a temporary residence in Sangklaburi, Thailand. Influences include a tangled web of notions about rivers, story-telling, international borders and the nature of water as it moves through these constructions. We are currently collecting skipping stones from various rivers along our travels and mailing them to each other, each of us skipping our imported stones over the waters of a new river across the planet from the last.

Skipping stones have been traded between:

Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Tonle Sap, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Ohio River, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Songkalia, Sangklaburi, Thailand
Rogue RIver, Oregon, USA
Mae Nam Ping, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Cumberland River, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Nam Khan, Laung Prabang, Laos
San Jose River, Utah, USA
Mekong, Vientaine, Laos
Youghiagheny River, Pennsylvania, USA

installation views of first draft, 2006

For an installation in October, 2006, we attempted a sort of "first draft" of this collaboration. We collected water from the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which intersect in downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. These samples were then run through slow drip lines positioned over sample rocks from the Mae Nam Ping (Chiang Mai, Thailand) and Rogue River (Oregon, USA). The resulting drips splashed against a large sheet of vellum which bore drawings of the fictionalized intersections of these two rivers with Pittsburgh's aforementioned ones. The ink from the drawing slowly leeched and mixed together while the accumulated water made miniscule patterns in a mixture of sand and diatomaceous earth below. When the installation ran it's course, the sample stones were then skipped in their corresponding local rivers.