My friend Laray Polk sent me a note earlier in the week. It read, in part: “This week is the install. I will be moving 600 lbs of White Rock to one gallery and bags of Bolivar Peninsula sediments to the other.”
If you recognize Laray’s name, it might be because the artist and author has written for D Magazine. She has given a lot of thought to the Trinity River. Back in 2016, she collaborated with the artist Marcos Lutyens on something called The Trinity River Project, which was part journalism, part exhibition, part guided meditation. The exhibition part, like the river itself, found its way to Galveston. Laray has also collaborated with Noam Chomsky.
All of which is to suggest that you might want to put some dates on your calendar. Laray is participating in an SMU-hosted exhibition titled “Aquatic Channels: Waterways, Water Resources, Fluvial Imagination.” It opens tomorrow at 1 p.m. at two separate galleries and runs through February 19. That’s why she was hauling 600 pounds of rock this week. And she’ll speak November 17 on a panel with Charles Allen, the noted Trinity River guide (6 p.m., at the Hamon Arts Library).
“Aquatic Channels” will also feature the work of Ubiratan Gamalodtaba Suruí, a Brazilian photographer and filmmaker; Gabriel Bicho, a Brazilian multimedia artist; David de Rozas, a filmmaker based in California; and Carolina Caycedo, a Columbian multimedia artist. It’s all curated by Gabriela Paiva de Toledo, a Ph.D. candidate in art history. Go here to read more about the exhibition and how to navigate between the two SMU galleries that will host it.
The rain is expected to let up just in time tomorrow for you to contemplate “Aquatic Channels.”
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