SFCC hosting art exhibit, “Mapping the Spokane River”
The Spokane Falls Community College of Fine Art Gallery is hosting the exhibit “Mapping the Spokane River.” The exhibit will run from September 23rd to October 18th.
Greg Schlanger, who also teaches and is chair of the art department at Central Washington University, is the artist. “Maps provide a sense of place. But whether that sense of place is literal, figurative, metaphoric or a memory, maps change.” Challenges Schlanger, “Can a map tell part of your Spokane River story?”
This is more than a rhetorical question. Click here to go to Schlanger’s Facebook page. He invites people to submit Spokane River photos and stories. He’s also inviting people to bring a water sample from the river and place it in the exhibit.
Said Andy Dunau, the Forum’s Executive Director, “Gregg is picking up on a powerful theme about how individuals and communities relate to their water ways.” Here are three examples:
- Click this video of Spokane Indian Tribal elder Bill Mac relaying Spokane River stories at a Forum Meet Me at The River paddle and camp trip.
- Spokane artist Ben Joyce has received national acclaim for creating T o p o p h i l i a® – The Love of Place.
- Internationally, Masaru Emoto of Japan claims that human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water, taking on the “resonance” of the energy (love, hate, pollution, treatment, etc.) which is directed at it.
“For all the time, energy and millions of dollars we spend on this river,” said Dunau, “Schlanger is giving us an opportunity to pay homage to our relationship to it. At the end of the day, that relationship is stronger and bigger than any spreadsheet or report can convey. Heck, over seven hundred people are turning up for the annual Spokane River Cleanup because they care. In small and large ways, people map their relationship to this river every day.”