Expressions Presents The Hidden Life of Water: SJSU Brings Together Art and Science to Mark World Water Day

Environmental Studies Department Chair Katherine Cushing, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Costanza Rampini and Director of Sustainability Debbie Andres share insight at the Hidden Life of Water. Photo by Patrick Samuels, ’23 BFA Photography.

by Monica Shannon, ’25 Advertising

This article was originally published by the College of Humanities and the Arts in the spring 2023 edition of Expressions, a newsletter created by students in HA-187: Creative Team Practicum. The internship course gives students the opportunity to gain professional experience in writing, graphic design, photography, and video production.

“Close your eyes and envision yourself in your favorite place. What does it look like? What does it sound like? Are you in nature? Are you in or near a body of water?”

This is how Katherine Cushing, Environmental Studies Department Chair, opens her water resource management classes. When immersed in the exercise, her students often find themselves in a water landscape.

Cushing and Molly Hankwitz, lecturer in SJSU’s Art and Art History Department, have been talking about water sustainability for years. To mark World Water Day 2023, they decided to host the Hidden Life of Water @ SJSU for a much-needed conversation with the university community.

During their initial conversations about a water sustainability event, themes of California’s lasting drought status were the obvious way to go. A panel about ‘living dry’ was planned, but with the effects of climate change becoming more present—in the form of extreme weather—plans changed for the panel to be about living in extreme environments at both ends of the water spectrum.

“We were worried going into the winter that it would be the third year of drought,” Cushing says. However, “given the extremely wet winter we’ve had, everyone is paying more attention to water. This makes the event especially poignant.”

The U.S. drought monitor shows the change from December 2022 to March 2023. “In three to four months the drought map totally changed,” says Cushing. “Over the last three months we went from most of California being in a pretty severe state of drought to almost 20 percent of the state getting out of the drought—a dramatic change.”

Making faculty-driven art and science projects around the value and meaning of water visible to the SJSU community and beyond was important to Hankwitz, a curator and event organizer. The way to achieve this: the intersection of the arts and sciences.

Linking water and art was natural, says Cushing. Humans have an innate connection to water. Examples: Not being fully awake until you have a morning shower or needing white noise of rainwater to fall asleep.

To unveil projects about the invisible effects of our water usage meant “using any means possible to connect with people and have them want to learn and care about water resources,” says Cushing. “Arts reach people in a different way compared to strict facts.” Key presenters on the panel are Costanza Rampini, who talked about vulnerable populations and flooding, and director of the Office of Sustainability, Debbie Andres, the go-to source for on-campus recycled water and water catchment initiatives.

Through the Gila River Project, Joel Slayton, emeritus faculty member in SJSU’s Art and Art History department, studies America’s most endangered river. Environmental art showcases a natural system that survives through ‘eco-plasticity’, a concept Slayton created while working together with scientist Lisa Johanson. It means the co-adapting of an environment alongside humans. The Gila River Project takes many expeditions through the 649-mile river flowing through New Mexico and Arizona illuminating how this dynamic and complex system is impacted by climate change.

SJSU Art Professor Robin Lasser presented fire-scarred and flooded landscapes through large-scale photographic postcards, 3-D point cloud scans, biodata sonification of surviving trees translated as a song, and more. Photo by Jeffrey Garnes, Jr., ’23 Photography.

Robin Lasser, professor of art, connects the emotional turmoil of “a native Californian’s excursions through fire and water” to the reality of how our water management affects our environment through those left standing. Lasser will present fire-scarred and flooded landscapes through large-scale photographic postcards, 3-D point cloud scans, biodata sonification of surviving trees translated as a song, and more.

We’ve been “trained since we were little to consume media and be consumers. This might be why Lasser shows these damaged landscapes through mediums like postcards often bought at national parks,” says Cushing. “We only know how to be consumers. We don’t really know how rights issue.” This will guide them to be politically and socially active. We need to exercise those different kinds of muscles to think beyond our personal sphere and think more about the policy implications and demand it of our leaders.”

Think about just how much water it took to make your jeans, your cup of coffee or a piece of fruit grown in state versus out of state, says Cushing. “We expect clean water to come out of the faucet every time we switch on the handle. The economic signals of the value and scarcity of water as a resource is lost on us. However, the work presented through the event can be a start for a new way of thinking.”

Through these panels and art projects, it’s less like looking at a climate clock ticking toward an unreachable deadline in a dystopian world as the time crunches down on us as the whole of humanity in an awful group project with even worse partners.

As Cushing puts it, “by educating ourselves and engaging more at the social and political level we can together feel more optimistic about these changes, because it can get depressing as we are thinking of things at a global scale.”

Environmental Studies Department Chair Katherine Cushing, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Costanza Rampini and Director of Sustainability Debbie Andres share insight at the Hidden Life of Water. Photo by Patrick Samuels, ’23 BFA Photography.

Entire areas of the United States like Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi lack clean and accessible water, not to mention water in other parts of the United States needing to be shipped out long distances due to the different policies in place on how we share the resource, says Cushing. “Water is being called ‘the new oil.’ It is used across industries and communities. There is a growing need for United Nations conversations about countries sharing resources responsibly as a human rights issue.”

Hankwitz says, “this is why we have a World Water Day…to share this necessary resource and why we faculty at SJSU felt students should share a breath of relief, celebrate the water we’ve received, and think about the fragility of the planet. Rather than anxiously wondering how our planet will fare. Through creativity and knowledge, students will have a way to think about the meaning of water and what they can do to help.”

As Hankwitz put it, “how we share the resources we have is a human rights issue.” This will guide the conversation we continue to have about managing water resources. “How are we sharing the planet rather than destroying it? Water belongs to everyone.”

The Hidden Life of Water was supported by the College of Humanities and the Arts’ Artistic Excellence Programming Grant.

Learn more about Expressions, the College of Humanities and the Arts’ HA-187: Creative Team Practicum internship.