Losing River 1997-2022
32x72x40 inches
2022
Colored pencil, pencil, marker, cemetery soil, blue thread, photographic transparencies, light table
Losing River 1997-2022 is an imagined map of my grief landscape that marks the loss of my maternal grandparents in 1997 and represents my grief journey since. Losing rivers, also called lost, sunken, or disappearing rivers, are not uncommon in karst environments where the subterranean landscape is sometimes hollowed. Here, streams can disappear into sinkholes and cracks and crevices and flow underground for a time before reappearing at the surface. Their presence/absence seemed a fitting metaphor for extended grief. The shape and direction of my losing stream is based on my own knowledge of how rivers behave and on the personal events that are elements of my grief story. Areas where the river is shown by a solid line represent periods when my grief was visible and places where it is shown by a dotted line are the times when it flowed beneath the surface. The tributaries that flow into my stream are specific incidents that either contributed to my grief or brought it back to the surface. As they join the stream it becomes deeper and wider. The contour lines representing the topographical features around my stream were created intuitively. The stream and its tributaries served as a foundation for them to form around. Closer to the source the contour lines are closer together and run closer to the stream, representing steep and rocky terrain that would be challenging to navigate. As the line of the river moves from left to right, past to present, the contours become more spaced and gradually move further away from the stream to represent a landscape that becomes more open and flatter so that eventually you would be able to walk comfortably along the shore.
