One microphone was submerged in the South River, the other was placed stethoscope-like on a three-week-old baby’s chest. A dozen or more of us listened, spellbound, to the sound of the baby’s heart.
The sound installation was the work of Nina Rossi, one of the members of the word and art performance group, Exploded View, of which I am also a member. Rossi set up her amps, one of them covered by a large, anatomically correct heart sewn from fabric, in the riverside yard of Phyllis Labanowski of Conway as part of Exploded View’s current project, “Exploded View: River,” an inquiry into how West County residents interact with the rivers that run through their towns.
“You wouldn’t think this would be so fascinating,” said Samantha Wood, deputy managing editor of The Berkshire Eagle and Exploded View member. “But look at us. We’re all riveted. I’d pay 10 bucks every weekend to hear this.”
Sunday’s event was entirely free. Other activities included exploring Wood’s installation, The River Cube, decorating paper fish, and photo ops with Annie Andromous, the Shad Mermaid, a colorfully painted cut-out made by Rossi, and behind the Waterwall, a device that circulates water over a clear panel of acrylic.
“It’s like an Etch-a-Sketch, only wet. It’s a Wets-a-Sketch,” quipped Eggtooth Productions director Linda McInerney as she diverted the rivulets with her fingers.
Labanowski avowed as how she’d like to build an entire meditation space using Waterwalls.
The Waterwall is an example of what happens when you take a careless dreamer — me — and pair her with a mechanical engineer — Mark Waller of Greenfield. All of a sudden my whim, to photograph people behind a wall of trickling water, becomes a functioning device and people are stepping up behind it.
“What if?” becomes, “What next?”
Which is also a really good summation of working with Exploded View.
Exploded View debuted last fall at the Greenfield Annual Word Festival. The premise, the brainchild of Buckland poet Candace Curran, was to invite a group of women who worked both with words and in visual arts to create a performance that embodied both. We weren’t really thinking beyond that one task or that one festival. But the collaborative energy we sparked in each other, and the success of those first performances — close to 100 people squeezed into a small storefront on Main Street in Greenfield for our second Word Festival performance — spurred us on to create new work.
On Sunday, Curran, Wood and I took a break in the shade and talked about Exploded View. How did they explain our work to other people, I asked them, and what did it mean to them to do it?
“Paying attention to how we perform poetry changes everything,” Wood says. “And making a performance together is really different from how I ever experienced reading poetry by myself.”
The obligation she feels to the group makes her, “Better at doing or trying anything,” Wood says. “Which is exciting. Our combined intelligence is really exciting. And our skill sets.”
Curran says, “I think we explode off of each other, every meeting.
“… We feed off each other. It grows right then and there, all the thoughts and the ideas the new things happen and we’re right there doing it.”
“I think we’re all really good writers,” Curran adds, eliciting laughter all around. “And I think when we do some unusual representation of word and image, I think it makes it something very different, that people can experience not just as a poetry reading or just looking at a piece of art but as something that is happening right then, which makes that poem come alive.”
Out in Labanowski’s yard, people milled about into the late afternoon, checking out The River Cube, writing their river stories on oval “fish scales,” and listening to the river or to each other’s heartbeats.
Lora Saltis of Westhampton said the project fit in perfectly with what she called her “Mother Waters” journeys, trips she’s been making to visit sources of water all over the world. Water is an elemental force, Saltis said, and she enjoys “communing with its eternal, maternal force.”
Roger Goshea, who lives just across Main Street from Labanowski, walked over to see what was going on. He and Wood studied a stream map of New England while he told her fishing stories.
“We have to keep our streams clean,” Goshea said. “Do you like drinking water? Or do you like drinking gas?”
Liam Horton, 10, rode down on his skateboard to check out the activities, after having seen the signs advertising the event earlier in the week.
“I liked that you used nature and homemade things to entertain, instead of handing me an iPad,” Horton said.
Horton was intrigued enough by the offerings to ride off and return with his friend Jaxon Spearance, 8, to spend a little more time exploring The River Cube before baseball practice.
Ruth Parnall and Ginny Sullivan, both of Conway, said they came because they’d received an email about it from Labanowski.
“It sounded like something we shouldn’t miss,” Parnall said.
Indeed!
There are two more Exploded View: River events coming up.
Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m., Exploded View brings “The River Cube” to the Arthur A. Smith Covered Bridge on Lyonsville Road in Colrain. Explore the River Cube, have your photo taken with Annie Adromous, the Shad Mermaid, or behind the Waterwall. Sychronize your heartbeat with the river. The event will also feature readings by Colrain poets, including 2016 Poet’s Seat Prize adult winner Dennis Piana, Robert Steinem, and the work of Carol Purington. The gathering is informal; please feel free to bring along a folding chair or blanket. Special thanks to Eggtooth Production for supporting this event.
Saturday, June 10, from 4 to 6 p.m. “Exploded View: River” will be at the Pothole Viewing Platform on Deerfield Avenue in Shelburne Falls. Word and art performance begins at approximately 4:30, followed by time to view “The River Cube” and other art installations.
“Exploded View: River” is partially funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council through a H.A.T.C.H. grant from the Greater Shelburne Falls Area Business Association and The Art Garden.