JUDITH WILLIAMS

WATER / COLOUR: COLLECTIONS AS INQUIRY

text by Judith Williams

I wish to acknowledge the Water/Colour project took place in the ?op gaymixin, toq gaymix and la?amen gaymix Nations territory.

The Water / Colour project began in 2010 in response to applications to the B.C. Government for permits to install 17 run-of-river hydro installations in Bute Inlet and seven applications for collection and export of water from Bute on the mid-coast of British Columbia. Research visits to the inlet and the 1996 publication of High Slack: Waddington’s Gold Road and the Bute Inlet Massacre of 1864, based on my 1993/4, UBC Museum of Anthropology installation, familiarized me with the terrain and I was shocked at the size of the resource grab. How could the extreme Bute environment handle that degree of construction and extraction without damage to its steep, volatile landscape?

I collected water from all the relevant waterways and made paintings with the water alone, allowing it to create whatever marks, tone or texture it might. As a “control”, to paintings made with wild, fresh water draining from 13,000-foot high Mt. Waddington and the vast Homathko Icefield, I collected water from Smelt Bay Creek on Cortes Island, the Seine and Thames Rivers and a low tide Venetian Canal; water heavily affect by human usage.

As I collected water, water collected me. It released stories, geological data and demanded images of collection sites. I was grateful to add data from Homalco people in whose territory I collected. I researched lives of settlers and the power projects proposed from 1920 to the present.[i] My collecting adventures were complied into booklets and the Cascade cabinet was built to contain and organize this waterfal of material into an investigative structure. When the largest recently recorded landslide lurched down Elliot Creek into Southgate River’s sturdy salmon habitat in November 2021, I was made brutally aware Bute’s vast landscape was now, as my explorations coalesced, not just under threat of exploitation, but also rapidly transforming in our new climate conditions. Homathko Icefield, the third largest outside the Arctic, and a major source of the water collected, was shrinking.

Through a series of Water/Colour installations I hope to sensitize viewers to the value of this wild water storage area, its threatened salmon habitat, the grandeur of its landscape and the effect of “water damage” from ongoing melt. We need to acknowledge the scientific view that a sequence of magnificent BC inlets are the engines of our coast. I hope the gentle paintings expand that view.

Thanks to Homalco Chief Darren Blaney, mountaineers John Scott and Rob and Laurie Wood, Gizelle Uselle, Randy Kelloran, Chuck and Sheron Burchill of Homathko Camp, Iris Steigemann, boating companions Susan Schell, Mark Gomes, Cathy Campbell, John Campbell and Bobo Fraser.

Water/Colour was also installed at Lund’s “Above Tide Art Centre” and the “Cortes Island Old School House Gallery” in 2022

Artist Bio