No Se Puede Comprar La Lluvia (you can't buy rain) 

Round Rock Arts Downtowner Gallery

Adornment Exhibition: Sept. 14 - Nov. 17, 2023

We are graced to reside on the deep, fertile soils of the Blackland Prairie. Once a 10 million-acre sea of grass that teemed with life, it absorbed and filtered the rain, sending it into the cool dark of the Edwards Aquifer. Today, only 1% of that prairie still exists, its diverse wildlife dwindling down into the few pockets left by ever-growing urban sprawl. Without the open grasslands, the once seemingly endless supply of fresh drinking water from the aquifer is also now under threat. Round Rock’s insatiable thirst has expanded from the first well at the corner of Mays and Main in 1896, to pulling water from as far away as Lake Travis. The summer’s unrelenting heat only deepens that thirst. 2023 has broken the record for both the hottest July as well as the longest continuous stretch of 100-degree days in over 125 years of recordkeeping. No one knows when the heat will break or when the next rains will come. This work represents that anxious uncertainty.

mixed media: hand-dyed fabric using a folded shibori technique, papier-mâché mask and dried plant material.