Vivrière, in French, is the feminine form of an adjective that refers to the production of food, not commercial production, but for survival, for life. I imagine the word vivrière itself as a plant, whose seed pod contains other life-giving words from my mother tongue (rivière, erre, vive, vie, rêve, vert, vivier, verre, verrière…). Vivrière, the exhibit of the same name, gathers together a collection of my watercolors, drawings, photographs and texts from 2016 to 2026. The words hidden within “vivrière”—dream, river, glass, green, life— all capture and refract glimpses of the nature of the pieces, and what binds them together. The four different art-making practices also inform each other, and blend into each other the way pigments bloom and spread inside a pool of water. My watercolors are made with water from the rivers and oceans that I also film and photograph. Many of the drawings are themselves studies of photographs. The texts sometimes study paintings, tell the story of the first acrylic monochrome yellow painting I ever made, the etymology of the word orange, or they transform a color into a central character. One photograph circles back to the origins of my watercolor practice, depicting PLAYA, the artist residency where I took my first watercolor and pigment-making workshop with the painter and poet Daniela Molnar. Some words within “vivrière” resonate with homonyms. Take vive as an example. Vive, the adjective, quick and vibrant like water, a flame, an eye. Vive, the noun, a weever fish like the one my fourteen-year-old self stepped on, somewhere in Portugal, instilling a life-long deep admiration for their skills of camouflage and the power of their venom. And vive, the imperative form of the verb “vivre” as in Vive la Rivière! or, with Robert MacFarlane in mind, Long live the river!

Watercolor

I collect pigments my friends made from walnut, avocado pits, ochre; stone and flower essences such as labradorite and Japanese anemone; water samples from: ice storm, snow, ocean, pond, reservoir, rain in my backyard. I pour the water haphazardly on the paper, or I apply water with a thick brush to start. Then I pour a few drops of pigments. Colors spread on the page and mark their respective territories according to the weight of the pigment, the type of water, the nature and thickness of the paper, the degree of humidity in the air, and my own emotional landscape of the day.

Drawing

More recently my drawing practice shifted to serve my watercolor projects. This winter I made a series of sketches of the service berry in my backyard. Then I painted the space in between the naked winter branches with just rainwater collected in my backyard. Then I added pigments. Prior to this phase, I used to sketch both from nature and from photographs. The first few years I learned to draw, I only used graphite, charcoal, almost no color. Among the photographers that nourished my drawings the most are Francesca Woodman, Edouard Hannon, Constant Puyo.

Photography

I associate taking a photograph to walking alone and to listening. In 2019 I took a creative writing class on interspecies communication with Professor Janice Lee. Among other texts, we read Tree Talks by Wendy Burk and The Overstory by Richard Powers. We practiced ways to decenter our human experience and to invite the perspectives of other beings in our art- making practice. One year later, when the pandemic reconfigured our daily lives, that practice became even more of a priority. My daily walks in my neighborhood and the photographs I took then with my old Ipod are the remnants of this listening practice. Deep gratitude to my teachers: Daniela Molnar, Phil Sylvester and Janice Lee.