Wanted: Water Artists
‘The way I see it,’ wrote Brian Van Bower to start his Aqua Culture column in August 2000, ‘we watershapers can look at ourselves in one of two ways: as diggers of holes in the ground that hold water, or as artists working with one of the most exciting mediums on the planet. For a lot of reasons, I like the second of those options, because the first is passive – the sole goal being to contain the water – while the second gets me more deeply involved with a truly amazing and malleable material.’
‘Once we look at water the way a painter sees pigment or a sculptor views stone, we see a potential for dramatic contrasts: Water has a soothing effect, for example, yet it can be tremendously exciting and invigorating. It can ease your tired muscles, or it can challenge you to intense exercise.’ He continued:
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‘[Water] affords each and every one of us the opportunity to become a true artist, to create something that has a genuinely profound effect on everyone who ventures near it or boldly decides to take a dip. . . . [A]rtists are able to look at the world and use what they see to create meaningful works. . . . And even though we may not exactly think of it this way very often, I believe that is exactly what happens with many watershape designs.’
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‘If you doubt it, take a moment to consider all the ways that we see water in our environment, both man-made and natural. Now consider how those influences have already shaped our work: . . . The sight of water spilling over a dam wall first inspired the vanishing edge. Zero-depth entries were created to mimic beaches and shorelines. Waterfalls and streams come from nature, too, while distinctly architectural forms such as fountains take their inspiration in natural effects such as rainfall, surf crashing into the shoreline, geysers and natural springs.’
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‘[Once] I designed an elaborate watershape for a client who wanted a waterfall that created a flume that would spill into a swale that would feed a stream flowing beneath a cantilevered deck. This, to say the least, was an elaborate design and resulted in a beautiful set of drawings – but it was one of those situations where the package far exceeded the budget.’
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‘Several months went by before she called me back. . . . She had found a single piece of sculpture, compact and efficient, [that] conjured enough of a sense of waterfall, flume, swale and stream combined that it satisfied her desire and brought me back into the loop to help bring it all together.’
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‘Nothing about the hydraulics, engineering or sheer inventiveness [of the sculptor] impressed her the way it impressed me. Rather, it was the beauty of the water itself: She was simply fascinated, utterly transfixed by watching it move.’
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‘That brings up a point: I think that sometimes, we watershapers sort of fall in love with the engineering and technology available to us. . . . I’m in no way implying that technical skill isn’t of huge importance; rather, what I’m saying is that we tend to pursue technology with the thought that bigger is better and more is better and that the virtue is in the technology rather than the effects it can create. With this approach, artistry is a weak cousin – and I don’t think any watershaper should let that happen.’
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‘I [once] caught myself staring at a tiny waterfall. . . . [It] was in fact a major cascade and tourist attraction in winter and spring, but we were there in August . . . so just a trickle was on view. . . . I thought to myself, if a pool builder designed and built a similar feature with these huge boulders and dramatic elevation changes, it would invariably be made with an aggressive flow of water and the biggest pumps and piping he or she could lay hands on. But when I stepped back and considered things from an artist’s perspective, I drank in the subtlety of this small flow and appreciated the way it made the effect even more captivating.’
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‘[T]here’s an understandable tendency to regard discussions like this as pretty esoteric – interesting, perhaps, but not all that useful to people wrapped up in the day-to-day world of designing, engineering and installing watershapes. It’s a steel and concrete thing, they say, not an abstraction.’
‘I used to feel that way,’ Brian concluded, ‘and I’m still known to share a humorous remark or two at the expense of the overly artistic among us. As I’ve delved further and further into the importance of purely aesthetic issues, however, I’ve found that there is tremendous practicality in understanding the emotional impact of water.’
Do you, like Brian, perceive the tension between art and technology? Is balancing these two forces a daily issue for you as a watershaper, or have you managed to come to terms with their disparate needs in ways that please you as well as your clients? Please share your thoughts by commenting below!
Brian Van Bower runs Aquatic Consultants, a design firm based in Miami, Fla., and is a co-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group; dedicated to top-of-the-line performance in aquatic design and construction, this organization conducts schools for like-minded pool designers and builders. He can be reached at [email protected].