The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

Art Gallery’s ‘Body of Water’ highlights the beauty and importance of water

The work of 24 different drawers, painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, videographers and poets will be on display at the El Camino Art Gallery from Aug. 24 to Sept. 17.

“Body of Water: a multi-faceted look at H2O from drought to deluge” strives to show the essentiality of water and bring awareness to its scarcity while at the same time celebrating the beauty, meaning and importance of water itself.

The idea for “Body of Water” spawned directly from the works of Sant Khalsa, who has been working with water-related projects for more than 30 years, according to Susanna Meiers, director and curator of the Art Gallery.

“Water has been the central subject of my photographic, sculptural and installation works since 1980. The work has developed from my continued explorations into the meanings, mythologies and metaphors, as well as the science associated with water,” Khalsa said in her artist statement.

While “Body of Water” does have many pieces about the drought, Meiers said that one should not focus directly on the drought, but, instead, one should take a more wholesome look and see the beauty and how essential H2O is.

Featuring oil paintings, sculptures, video and photography, “Body of Water” provides various mediums of art. Hopefully this will inspire art majors at EC who can greatly benefit from seeing the variety of ways the different artists expressed themselves while still portraying water as life and its destructive capabilities.

“The exhibit is very varied. It has paintings, videos and photos,” Aaron Ramirez, 25, psychology major said. “It focuses on water in general, but ‘Dodo on my Head’ does a good representation about running out of water.”

“Pray for Rain” by Sant Khalsa is inspired by the Tibetan prayer wheel. It is a clear blown glass cylinder that is half full and has the word “water” embossed in Morse code. Inside the cylinder there are 28 corked small glass bottles, each containing a word associated with water. Each rotation of the prayer wheel equals a prayer for water and the planet.

“It’s a group of vey talented artists,” Meiers said. “(The exhibit) brings awareness to the drought because the subject has been in the news lately, but it also shows how water is important to life.”

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