Confluence

susan shantz

My recent art exhibition, Confluence, uses contemporary cartographic road maps as source material to search for an alternative, watershed map of the Saskatchewan River from source to delta and ocean across three prairie provinces.1 Using drawing, embroidery and large-scale cutwork tarps, I explored my river connection to the place where I live in Saskatoon which is divided and defined by water on the prairie. By tracing the currents of streams and rivers with ink, thread, paint and cut-outs, I followed meandering water lines that interrupt the boundaries of the regulated prairie grid, connecting my point on the river to humans and more-than-humans2 upstream and down.

What if my territory of belonging were defined by the course of water rather than land? Might I discover the point of view of a river with my pencil/pen/needle/knife? Draw, stitch and cut my way through the overlaid network of occupation to the find the undercurrents of water in the watershed territory I inhabit? Confluence contrasts the fragmentation and gridding of the prairie through surveying and mapping with the less visible path of water.

1 The Saskatchewan River delta, the largest inland delta in North America, spans the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border near Cumberland House, Saskatchewan connecting Treaty 5, 6 and 10 territories with many Cree and Metis inhabitants. It is considered the terminus of the Saskatchewan River watershed after which its waters become 15.4% of the water in the Nelson River which flows into Hudson's Bay.

https://www.hydro.mb.ca/assets/img/figurebox/dry-conditions-arent-only-factor-in-mh-water-supply-2.png

Accessed 21 Nov. 2022.

2 'more-than-human' – a term used in some academic disciplines to question the binary of human/nonhuman and culture/nature.

I (Saskatchewan River), installation; 4 tarps, 359 x 1280 x 853 cm, 2018-2019

A watershed dream is shared by contemporary bioregionalists as well as the visionary nineteenth century head of the U.S. Geological Survey, John Wesley Powell, who, in 1890 proposed dividing the arid American west along twenty-three watershed boundaries.3 Now, in a time of climate crisis, this vision is needed to remind us of what has been lost even if it seems only a dream from an unrealized past. What might it mean to live with 'watershed mind'?4 To feel the connection between water in and outside our bodies, upstream and downstream from our point on a map? Might “watershed” itself be too static a term for something so fluid -- given water is an element that erodes edges and consists of multiple “nested and overlapping scales ranging from the interiority of individual bodies to the planetary hydrological cycle.”?5

3 Ross, John F. 'The Visionary John Wesley Powell Had a Plan for Developing the West, But Nobody Listened'. July 3, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/visionary-johnwesley-powell-had-plan-developing-west-nobody-listened-180969182/ Accessed 8 Nov. 2022.

4 Peter Warshall used this term to describe the shift in thinking needed to better align ourselves with water. Warshall, Peter. 'Watershed Governance'. Writing on Water, edited by Rothenberg and Ulvaeus, MIT Press, 2001. p 47

5 Biro, Andrew. 'River-Adaptiveness in a Globalized World'. Thinking with Water, edited by Chen, MacLeod, and Neimanis, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2013. p 175 local topographic maps.

Confluence II (Bow/Oldman/Red Deer/Saskatchewan Rivers), bookwork; mixed media on pellon, 312.4 x 426.8 x 782.3 cm, 2020-2021

Confluence I (Bow/Oldman/Red Deer/Saskatchewan Rivers) bookwork; paper, thread, 188.0 x 24.1 x 7.6 cm, 2017 figure

River Wear (for managers), found objects, embroidery, 137.2 x 35.6 x 94.0 cm (each), 2018-2020 left: detail of River Wear (for managers: glacial source)

River Wear (for managers) with video projection of the artist’s hand embroidering the path of water across the prairie overlaid with the footage of the river’s changing water surface and sounds of geese in migration.

River Wear: Current, video (looped), 2:54 min, 2020 https://vimeo.com/768284162

A number of pieces in Confluence began as small-scale tracings from conventional maps, as I sought the path of water, using pen, paint and thread. Scaled up, these became large installations: the blue ballpoint ink lines of water lines hidden amidst the roads and towns of three prairie highway maps were increased, inches to feet, and cut into azure-blue tarps hung overhead to cast shadow-maps below (figures 2 and 2a); the accordion-fold bookwork of the river meandering through the soft topography of badlands expanded to eight stitched fabric panels cascading down the wall of the gallery and across the floor (figures 3 and 4). In another series, I embroidered the path of water in three key watershed zones onto the back of white-collar shirts for water managers. If we wore the river, like a ritual garment connected physically and imaginatively to our bodies (figure 5), might we make different decisions about the upstream and downstream waters that connect us -- humans and more-than-human beings – in our watersheds?

After completing and exhibiting the Confluence installation, I returned to my map-source and, with white paint and a fine-pointed brush, covered over the grid-lines and dots of roads and towns to better see the connecting paths of rivers as well as the loose outline of the watershed that holds them. This hydrocommons, beneath the ghostmarks of civilisation (figure 6), is a threshold edge, opening to the white ground of the map itself and revealing a permeable space. Like the water’s shoreline on a river or lake, it is a more complex zone of transition than John Wesley Powell might have imagined with his demarcated governance boundaries.

While mapping conventions were my starting point for the works in Confluence, my materials and methods upended those conventions and dissolved the smooth surface of the map into complex fragments. Those who entered the space of Confluence heard the babble of water6 as my multi-scaled, reconfigured maps expanded the parameters of mapping. From video and audio to embroidered shirts, to tarps and books, Confluence exhibits multi-sensory modes of knowing that come closer to the complexity of land over and under water; of water shifting land and land directing water. p

6 Cecelia Chen uses this term to describe the excess metaphorical 'noise' of water that may go beyond conventions of both mapping and knowing leading to experimental and diverse methods of representation. 'Mapping Waters: Thinking with Watery Places'. Thinking with Water, edited by Chen, MacLeod, and Neimanis, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2013. pp 278 – 298 https://www.susanshantz.com/confluence

Those who entered the space of Confluence literally heard the sound of water from three video/audio projections of freezing/melting ice/water from streams and rivers in the watershed.

Confluence was recently exhibited at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, February 4-May 1, 2022.

Susan Shantz teaches studio art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan. Her multi-media artwork, Confluence, considers the Saskatchewan watershed and was informed by collaborating with environmental scientists.