Art exhibit focuses on reverence and vitality of the Taos community's lifeblood

The reception on Saturday (April 13) held a rapt audience of supporters when a group of Native singers did a prayer song honoring the power of water. Photo by Rick Romancito/The Taos News

Agua es vida. Aside from quenching our own thirst, our water quenches the thirst of our crops, our livestock and of the many other things upon which our human existence depends. Water is indeed life.
Here in Taos -- nestled in the often dusty, dry valley -- the arrival of spring means welcomed snowmelt and the annual ritual of cleaning and maintaining the many acequias that nourish us with the gift of those surface waters. Our aquifers are replenished and our rivers run high. To Máye Torres, owner of the gallery Studio 107B, it seemed timely to celebrate the delicate relationship between this precious commodity and ourselves.
"Acequias and Holy Water," the gallery's latest show, opened Saturday (April 13) and will be on view through May 31. It features the work of 50 invited artists whose submissions highlight the dance of nature.
"Our water is truly holy to us," Torres said. But while in the planning stages for the exhibit, "Acequias and Holy Water" also took a turn toward the political. "At first this exhibit was appropriate to the season," Torres said, "but to many of the artists who chose to participate it took on even more significance with the recent events that have drawn attention to our complicated relationship with water."
Torres was referring to the mid-March Guardians of Taos Water protest in which Buck Johnston, a Native American member of GOT, was arrested after spending four days atop a water well drilling rig. "He was protesting the Abeyta Water Rights Adjudication, a thoroughly convoluted settlement between the federal government, Taos Pueblo, the state, and local water districts," she explained. "So the political, cultural and socioeconomic discord of water rights, never far away, came back to the forefront of our conversation."

'The Floating Water Find the Way,' oil on canvas by Teruko Wilde. Photo by the artist

'Water Woman,' digital print with graphite and acrylic by Máye Torres. Photo by the artist