A cross-disciplinary creative lab, where we offered space for creators of all kinds to gather, spark and create live, symbolic expressions that respond to a feeling associated with water.

I was working on an ongoing series of poems and short stories, which investigate the sacred and complicated relationship between humans and nature. This work is rooted in my personal experiences with people living in places ranging from the highlands in rural Guatemala and the Delaware River Valley in upstate New York, to the desert in Southern California, and the coastal cities in Europe.

The Switch Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal invited me and Alexandra Banhazl, a sound a light artist, for a residency at the gallery. We invited the public to join us for a series of labs. The labs were an exercise in discovery - in unearthing and recognizing the symbols that create meaning in everyday life, and examining their roots in the natural world. Together, we created poetic images that exercised the conceptual muscle, and brought together fixed structures that impart meaning - both now, and in the future. We aimed to illuminate a unique perspective on our place, as humans, in the natural order of things.

DAWN GREY (1933)

The thing who lives at the end of the sea

Came from the deep darks to seek

The dawning of the new day

Of the new day that has no cease;

And said, "who is it, lies asleep,

Recalls he unveiled the Second World,

And his will to unveil the Third's too weak?"

And the sound of him circling in the gloom

Makes sleep evil, sad the dream.

The slave thing circled, has gone away,

Who here in search of his Lord came,

Came here to call his Lord by that name --

To call the one who is lying curled

Asleep and was Lord of the Sea.

Sound and light by Alexandra Banhazl

Photos by Skoya Assemat-Tessandier