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A puddle is both familiar and magical.  It is the everyday and the spectacular.  Peering into it, our minds wander and our imagination flows to that which we have forgotten, like to childhood, when we played and splashed in water with insouciance and total bliss.   

In a puddle, we see the world and ourselves reflected to us in a new way. We ask, What else my transient friend?  We look deeper. Our minds drift. Existence expands in puddle dreams. Our new perspective carries us to the sacred, the human connection we have to bodies of water, no matter their size, and we appreciate the silent contemplative moment.  

Rarely do I speak so candidly about my exhibition selections, however, having Erika b Hess’s puddle paintings in Gallery 310 is, in my mind, a gift to campus: 

a gift of stillness

a gift of experiencing a true painter’s painter

a gift of a generous empath doing the healing work of our time.

Director’s Notes

Jolene Powell