"No Swimming" is what happens too often as a result of altering our water environment. For example, we divert water destined for natural lakes, causing some lakes to dry up completely and leaving no water to swim in; we pollute our rivers, bays and oceans, some so severely that it is unhealthy to swim in them; we create large reservoirs for water supplies, call them lakes and then we're not allowed to swim in them. The inability to swim in our water is one of the signs of a non-sustainable water infrastructure.

Most of California is actually desert: the majority of the state receives little or no rain for 6 months out of each year. This condition makes it difficult to develop agriculture or sustain a large population without intervention. We have developed huge scale projects such as aqueducts to transport water from other states, large dams and reservoirs, and the pumping of ground water. These works are awesome in their magnitude and have an eerie beauty as feats of engineering yet they have destroyed the natural landscape. We rely on this water every day to live yet we have created an infrastructure that is not sustainable.

My art invites the viewer to ponder these contradictions in beauty and our long term strategies for sustainable development. Thank you for viewing my work.