This collection of images exhibited as part of a group show at Azusa Pacific University was inspired by one of the poems T.S. Eliot wrote titled "The Four Quartets". He uses a group of small, rocky islands off the coast of Massachusetts named The Dry Salvages to set up water as a metaphorical image of humanity and circular time.
Eliot asks us to consider humanity as water, as an entity with a unified subconscious and memory that produce mythic structures. In the same way that the rivers flow into the sea, there is a connection to all of mankind within each man. But if we just accept simply drifting upon the sea, we will end up broken by those very structures.
A river, subject of many human myths, is reduced to the status of a false god by pointing out its inferiority as an object for reverence because it is conquerable. Conversely the sea represents an endless reserve of untamable depths and unknowable mysteries. Man can live with the ocean but he will never master it.
Just as there is no true mastery of time, there is also no escape. The uncertain voyage of humanity requires faith, prayer, and hope. Time destroys but it also preserves, and just as there is no mastery there is also no escape. Just as we can neither escape nor romanticize the river, nor can we master the past. The uncertain voyage of humanity requires faith, prayer, and hope.
