Contemporary Art in Context: Eric Tillinghast

California-based artist Eric Tillinghast creates ambitious large-scale installations, sculptures, site-specific work, paintings, and photographs that explore humanity’s relationship with water, a precious resource that is increasingly at risk.

In Tillinghast’s unique art-making practice, water is the inspiration, subject matter, and medium. With drought conditions and climate change causing concern throughout the world, Tillinghast’s art is perhaps more relevant now than ever before. In focusing on water, he takes a common element and recontextualizes it. He also considers the history of water’s importance and how it has impacted religions and belief systems, often in a sacred or legendary manner.

Water Works
Tillinghast began work on his Water Series in 1994 in California, but he originally intended to only use water as a sculpture material. His focus on the idea of water as a sculptural material evolved when he constructed Rain Machine in (see centerspread) in New Mexico, which was then and still is experiencing a severe drought. Rain Machine is also referred to as #77 in his ongoing Water Series, and like his Flume Fountain in Cleveland (see Snapshots, p. 47), pumps and nozzles are expertly organized to elegantly display the beauty of falling water. The artist hopes viewers will contemplate their feelings about water while viewing the resource in motion.

The visual impact of water also plays a part in his series of photographs called Pools (see Freemont Inn, right), wherein Tillinghast uses Photoshop to eliminate all the contextual elements from swimming pool photographs that he either shot or appropriated. What is left is the ambiguous shape, color, and surface qualities of the pool of water, sometimes interrupted by other elements around it. He employs this technique in painting as well, depicting lakes, waterfalls, dams, watersheds, and tidal flows. The combined results of these works are a meditation on the form of water in both natural and domestic settings.

Art History: The Natural World
Water has been part of creation stories in many world cultures, as well as a life-sustaining element for humans, livestock, and crops. Since the ancient world, humanity has also been fascinated with the manipulation of the natural environment for artistic purposes. Cultures in Egypt and the Middle East diverted natural water flows for both agricultural and artistic purposes, such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (600s BCE). In the late 1960s, artists began exploring what is now known as Land Art, creating environmental projects that reflect a growing awareness of the damage caused by humanity’s exploitation of natural resources like water and oil. Today, artists like Tillinghast continue this dialogue as climate change increasingly impacts communities around the world and water supplies become more scarce.

ARTIST Q&A
What is a typical workday like for you?
Eric Tillinghast: I try to spend as much time in the studio as possible. Mornings are usually spent with works on paper, CAD drawings, and correspondence. By late morning, I am in the studio preparing material, doing layouts, and setting up tools. Then from noon until six or seven in the evening, I work on art.

Tell us about one of the biggest moments in your career.
ET: I was once photographing a water installation of mine first thing in the morning, and right when the museum opened, I heard a family come in. I could hear a little boy running through the whole exhibition. A few moments later he ran into my room, took a quick look around, and then at top volume yelled back, “Hey Mom! Hurry up! The good stuff is in here!”

Do you consider your work connected to Land Art?
ET: Yes, I think that seeing the work of the Land Art artists was a big inspiration for me as a young person; it definitely helped expand my view of artistic practice. I was drawn to the massive scale that is possible for sculpture in this context, and the distinct experience of this kind of art for the viewer is interesting to me. Making art that can exist outside of galleries, museums, cities, and homes has also always had a strong appeal.

Are your painted works related to bodies of water, such as Vijayanagara is to the Tungabhadra River in India?
ET: Vijayanagara is a painting from the exhibition Empires. Each of these works is made from a cardboard box that I unfolded and flattened, and then used the resulting shape to compose the colored design. They all began as similar looking, small rectangular boxes, but once unfolded, the design differences make it clear that there is an infinite number of ways to make a rectangular box. Each painting is named after a “great empire” that once was—from throughout our history of civilization—all of which have been completely different while serving the same universal purpose, much like a cardboard box.

DISCUSSION
Open a class dialogue by introducing students to Tillinghast’s Rain Machine. Ask students to consider what makes this piece different from a fountain. After some discussion, explain Tillinghast’s goal of inspiring viewers to reflect on their use of water, and how pollution and drought could change our future relationships to it. Ask students to consider how their own, or a family member’s, use of water might be part of the problem, or part of the solution. Ask, “How does our school use or conserve water? Could we do a better job? What about other precious resources that our community depends on?”

STUDIO EXPERIENCES

In a sketchbook or journal, consider a resource that you use every day without much thought (indoor plumbing, water fountains, electricity, internet access, pre-packaged foods, mass-produced clothing). How would your life change if this resource was no longer available? Create an artwork in any media inspired by this inquiry.
Choose an easy-to-find natural material such as water, sand, grass, rocks, etc., for a series of artistic experiments. What properties does the material have that might be used for an artwork? Texture? Sound? Movement? Record these experiments and any resulting ideas in your sketchbook.
Develop one of your natural material experiments (see above) into a finished work of art. Document and share your process through video or still images.

Contemplating Water