In a cheesy but classic episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” from the late ’80s, conflict arises on a supposedly barren planet. As humans drill into the surface to convert its minerals for their own needs, they inadvertently harm sentient microorganisms in the planet’s damp soil. The aliens start a war with the resource-hungry humans, whom they describe as “giant, ugly bags of mostly water.” Mary Mattingly’s work reinforces the idea that we are indeed mostly made of water — the artist sees our connections to social, natural and industrial systems through a kind of hydrologic lens. In “Water Writes the Garden” at the Current in Stowe, her photographs and installations center on themes of connection and what she calls “poetic instruction”: a way of incorporating beauty into an exploration of the sometimes giant, ugly truths of our actions. Mattingly, who lives and works in Brooklyn, is known for her sculptural and socially engaging public projects. Many of them seem to start with practical questions, such as how to live affordably as an artist today in New York City. The answers she extrapolates also speak to an uncertain future: What are we doing to our planet, and how will we live in an ever-more-likely ecological dystopia? Some of Mattingly’s explorations have led her to create sustainable structures that a person could inhabit, made from reclaimed materials and placed in urban locations. “Swale” was a “floating food forest” on a barge that docked from 2016 to 2020 at different sites around New York City. The project was a response to laws that prohibit foraging in the city; since it was on the water, terrestrial rules didn’t apply. For another effort, a series of performative sculptures, Mattingly made giant bundles of her own possessions, held together with twine, that she photographed and dragged through city streets — a way of examining her own role in global consumption. On a tour of the Current show, Mattingly said that work prompted her to turn her lens on the effects of her own practice. She said she started “looking at my own photographic material and equipment and trying to figure out how it was made — what my responsibility was with then taking a photograph.” Minerals such as cobalt and phosphate are used to make the batteries, lenses and electronics that go into a digital camera. Mattingly investigates these materials in a series of photos and digital collages displayed in the main gallery. Some of the images are documentary, such as photographs of white piles of phosphate at an abandoned site in Texas, an ore transport station on Lake Superior and the morning fog over a Michigan forest — the closest Mattingly said she could get to Eagle Mine, where cobalt is extracted. The collages combine these views with objects, creating more personal, poetic still lifes. “On Being Blue” nods to cobalt’s azure hue with blue bottles, some full of pigment, as well as rocks tied up with string and a collage-within-a-collage of photos of flowers taken at Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France. “A Silence Contained for Years” seems to turn an artist’s flat file cabinet into a lab bench: Tubes and string spill from its drawers. A series of small rocks — that seem like precious objects collected with care — are displayed against a backdrop of piles of phosphate, mountains in the distance. Mattingly said that in constructing her collages, she was thinking about the volume of photographs people take globally — now well over 1 trillion a year. The more photographs we make, the more energy they take and the less significance each has, she said: “Making sure that they mean something becomes really important.” “A Poem for Water” Credit: Courtesy of Matt Neckers Mattingly carries her symbolic arrangements of things from the collages into physical space with several sculptural pieces in the show. In “Poems for Plants,” she has placed objects on shelves — these include bottles, some containing pigments, seeds or liquids; spherical things such as a bowling ball, rocks and a turned wooden burl; rusty pipes; the base of an oil lamp; and driftwood. “A Poem for Water” uses ceramic vessels, plastic tubing and thrift-store art, all referencing water. Mattingly said she started arranging these sorts of objects as a way to jump-start her day in the studio. She would place each item to correlate with a word from a poem. “They’re very much about play,” she said, and a way to consider “land and water through objects.” One sculpture features a canoe filled with rock salt. In 2023, the same year many Vermonters faced epic flooding, Mattingly’s studio also flooded when Brooklyn’s stormwater system couldn’t keep up with both high tide and torrential rain. Salt from the East River was part of the residue left behind. The amount of salt in the canoe conveys an immensity of water, one that would take an eon to dry out. The sculpture sits well next to another series of photo collages that explore water’s role shaping the landscape — a topic the Current will highlight with upcoming public programs about flood resilience. Mattingly wanted to present the canoe, she said, “both floating and sinking simultaneously.” The artist has made many sculptures, most very large, in a series of “water clocks.” These are inspired by ancient timekeeping devices called clepsydras, similar to hourglasses, that essentially time how long it takes for water to flow from one vessel to another. Mattingly’s are much more elaborate, integrating many containers and tubes and sometimes melting ice or rainwater. Because it’s indoors at the Current, “Water Writes the Garden” is a closed system in which the water, contained in plastic tubes, winds through ceramic vessels that don’t have a physical effect on this clock’s function. But the gurgling sound ties it inextricably to the idea of water. Mattingly pointed out that all water that’s ever been on Earth is the same as what’s here now, everywhere in the world, including in all of our bodies. “Water does make its own route in its own time,” she said. “You can try to manage it, but it just has its own way.” “Water Writes the Garden” by Mary Mattingly, on view through April 10 at the Current in Stowe. thecurrentnow.org The original print version of this article was headlined “Water, Water | Mary Mattingly creates hydrologic poetics at the Current” The post Artist Mary Mattingly Creates Hydrologic Poetics at the Current appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less