UPSTREAM: Of a River That Flows Two Ways
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2025
Dye-sublimation on fabric, paper, laser engraving on wood
18 1/2 L x 12 1/2 W x 1 D in (47 x 32 x 3 cm)
“UPSTREAM: of a River That Flows Two Ways” is an artist book that presents an intimate view of the Hudson River’s ever changing water. This work documents the extensive tidal range and its perpetual directional shifts through a photographic series of water surfaces from traveling the course of the Lower Hudson. With 153 long miles of tidal range stretching from Troy to New York Harbor, this duration is still only half of the entire river body, as the water continues past Troy’s Federal Dam to Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks. This project focuses mainly on the Lower Hudson, which is the tidal section of the river.
Emphasizing the back-and-forth movement of the water, the mechanics of this book offers the ability for viewing from both sides. On one side, the pages start from the bottom and carry on upward, while turning the book over gives the opposite configuration and movement. The translucent quality of the fabric brings the continuous impression of a singular body of water, overlapping and conversing through each ripple. As each page is turned, the water carries us to and from, upstream and downstream; only this time, it is up to us to decide which direction is to the sea, and which is returning inland.
The notion of ‘upstream’ metaphorically conveys the meaning of returning ‘home’, arriving back to a place of origin, wherever that might be, toward whichever way that might direct. With the Hudson River as a state of living flux, this notion is muddled and presents a more fluid reading of ‘home.’ Not as some undefined space of stasis, but an ever evolving and adapting kinship.
