Activity Guide by Kate Kwasneski
Intern, Grinnell College Museum of Art
Learn
Water is all around us. It makes up 60% of our bodies, it’s in the air, it’s in all the food we eat. We need water to survive. It’s no surprise, then, that many artists throughout time have chosen water or bodies of water as a subject: water is important and powerful, it sustains life but can also be destructive.
One artist from the museum’s collection that used water as a subject a number of times is Vija Celmins.
She was born in Lithuania, but because of World War II she and her family spent her early childhood in a refugee camp in Germany. When she was 10, she and her family moved to the United States. She spent the rest of her childhood in Indiana. Because she spoke so little English, her teachers really encouraged her art. She went to art school in Indianapolis and has been a practicing artist her whole life.
A lot of her work has focused on photorealistic depictions of objects – at first, man-made objects, but later the natural world. Below, you can a wood engraving and a screen print depicting the surface of the ocean. These images look very similar, despite being completely different mediums and having been done six years apart!
Look
Look closely at these artworks. They are very uniform; the waves look the same across the whole image. There are no landmarks, the images do not have a clear edge, and the surface is very flat. They also both use a lot of white space around the images themselves, they both are small images on large pieces of paper. What emotions do you feel looking at this water with no land – or anything else – in sight? What about the fact that these artworks are completely in black and white?
Create
Get outside and take some photos of water! Or, if you don’t have a camera or any water near you, you can draw or paint a water-themed artwork! Think about ways that you can make water look interesting! Here are some examples:
This image uses the waves on the surface of the water. They are right in the corner in a way that draws your eye.
This one uses reflections of the clouds to break up the surface of the water. The yellow and orange reflections make it so the image is not just blue.
This one uses seaweed that looks like trees growing under the water! Even though it is still just a photo of water, it uses things under the surface to make it more interesting.
You don’t need access to a lake or river to take photos of water. Sometimes you can even use a puddle!
Photography tips
Get really close to the water. Lean down and try holding your camera level with the surface. Be careful not to drop the phone or camera that you’re using!
Think about angles. You don’t have to hold your camera perfectly straight. What if you held it at a diagonal? How might that change the photo?
You can crop your photos. Sometimes, they look better once you have cut out the parts you don’t want.
Think about what’s in/on the water. Are there choppy waves, or is it perfectly still? Can you see plants or animals underneath? Think about how you can make an interesting photo by using the placement of things like waves and plants in your frame.
Write
Write about the role water has played in your life. Do you have memories of swimming in a lake when you were younger? Do you like to fish?