M is for Water is the latest in a series of exhibitions curated by artist Isabelle Sorrell exploring the origins of language and its relation to human consciousness. Featuring work by Shiva Ahmadi, Mari Andrews, Mildred Howard, Paul Kos, Hung Liu, Cheryl Meeker, Susan Middleton, Gay Outlaw, J. John Priola, Isabelle Sorrell, Theodora Varnay Jones, and Wanxin Zhang, the exhibition probes questions of elemental materiality and perception, examining the roots of language where our differentiation between “water” and “mother” begin to diverge.
Sorrell writes: "'M is for Water' finds its source in water’s gift of vitality, akin to a mother giving life. We observe a reflection of this in language, in its early pictograms and alphabets.
"'M,' believed to be one of the first letters of the Phoenician alphabet, had an antecedent in the Egyptian hieroglyph describing 'water,' and its history is intertwined with its mirror: 'W'. Words with a common etymology convey meanings that reveal the source of life in Nature and Humans alike... There is no Life without Water, there is no Child without Mother."
View of two of my drawings Alignment and Maelstrom-3 in the exhibition
(the small sculpture in the middle is by Gay Outlaw)
