Materials:

- India ink and brush
- One 9 x12 sheet of watercolor paper (pre-cut with five vertical slits)
- One 9 x 12 sheet of black card stock paper
- White chalk pencil
- Collected water and other objects


1) Go swimming or wading or run your fingers through a body of water. Know that the water is imbued with the memories and organic matter of every creature that is living or has died within that body. Bodies in a body. Bodies carried by a body.

Collect some of the water and other objects such as sticks, rocks, seaweed.

2) Think of an ancestor or loved one. Perhaps they join you back at your desk. What do they smell/sound/feel like? What have you inherited from them? From the water?

Use India ink and the water and any other site-collected objects to paint on the watercolor paper (placed vertically).




3) Meditating on the water and the person, write a stream of consciousness poem (horizontally) on the black paper.




4) Cut the poem, between the lines, into horizonal strips. Shuffle or keep them in order. Weave the strips, as if making a textile or basket, into the painting.





What is carried forward? What is left behind.