Artists Talk for "River Poems: East to West" Works of Stephen Chesley and Margaret Cogswell

As part of the programming for the exhibition, "River Poems: East to West", artists Stephen Chesley and Margaret Cogswell, whose work focuses on rivers, will be giving a talk on Tuesday, March 10, during which time they will discuss their own work, as well as the politics of water. 

“River Poems: East to West” will be on view from March 3 through April 19, 2015.

Stephen Chesley, is a well-known Columbia-based artist with a national reputation. Chesley has devoted much of his work to the natural world, especially water. In his own words, "Water, the liquid language of poetry, music, and paintings graces Earth with its beauty, life and unbridled strength. That water has nurtured biodiversity beyond the odds of the creative universe is reason enough to accept the honor of its stewardship." The work in this show will be a selection of Zen-like studies, minimal but powerful brush strokes that chronicle rivers from their most complex currents to simple reflections of meandering southern waterways.

Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in New York. Cogswell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2009. Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work has been a series of river projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES is a series of unique mixed-media installations that reveal the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. All projects are research based and use the musical structure of the fugue as a conceptual point of departure and as a guide for editing audio and video compiled along a river's course.