Studio Tour artist, James Entz, will show new work from March 4-28, 2010, at Fig Tree Gallery in Fresno. An artist’s reception will be held on March 4 from 5-8 pm, as part of the monthly Art Hop event. Fig Tree Gallery is located at 644 Van Ness Avenue (in downtown Fresno.) The gallery is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from noon to 4 pm.
work in progress for the new exhibition
James Entz’s exhibition of new work (sculptural paintings and some writings) explores the idea of water as the vehicle of the aqueous medium he works in, as a metaphor for the most valued aspect of his studio practice, “the creative flow–those moments of working transcendence,” as he says, and as the scarce resource and commodity that pervades California politics. “We are running our rivers dry here in the west,” says Entz. “We import water as the fuel for population and economic growth, and mine our groundwater as we did oil in the last century, at an unsustainable rate.”
Though Entz recognizes that water is “captured, diverted, and harnessed for human purposes, especially here in the Southwest”, he sees that, “water has carved this landscape, and continues to be a transformative presence in nature, transporting us out of the mundane disconnections of our modern world into nature’s flow. We live in aqueous bodies; our planet is an aqueous body; it seems that water and its qualities are our nature.”
In many ways, the topological paintings and writings in this exhibition have water as their source: celebrating, revealing, and reflecting water’s hard realities and unique qualities.
Living in the Kaweah River watershed in the Southern Sierra gives Entz a unique perspective on water use–from wild river to dam to irrigated farmland of the Central Valley.
