Dust to Dust presents Water Baby, a solo exhibition from Emily Endo. Inspired by watery dreamscapes, classical sculpture, and cartoon color palettes, Emily Endo’s newest body of work combines seashells, wax, water fountains, sound, and glass to create sensory experiences that invoke fantasy and beauty as pathways to bodily transformation. Water Baby is funded in part by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Building on her past works that explored the relationship between myth-making and natural transformation and her most recent collaborative exhibition, Liquid Nails, which used female self-care as a focal point to emphasize the tension between beauty and toxicity, Water Baby investigates the transformation of the body viewed through the fluidity of water and the fantastic lens of female adolescence.
Bathers (2018) consists of layered digital prints on fabric depicting abstracted bathers as if spied on through a waterfall. Drawn from the “Pastoral Symphony” portion of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), Bathers, in addition to the eponymous Silly Symphonies cartoon, combines Endo’s interest in nature, myth, and cartoon depictions of self-care.
These interests are also brought together in Singing Shell (2018), a conch shell that when listened to projects “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals rather than the whooshing sound that is sometimes thought of as the ocean. This use of natural objects as a surrogate for modern technology is a hallmark of cartoons.
Water Baby is a pop-up exhibition only on view January 13th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Emily Endo (formerly Emily Nachison) was born in San Diego, California. She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006 and a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010. She has been included in exhibitions across the country at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR), Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (Portland, OR), New Mexico State University Art Gallery (Las Cruces, NM), and University of Nevada Sheppard Contemporary (Reno, NV). In 2018 she was awarded a Project Grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council (Portland, Oregon). Endo was an artist-in-residence at Wassaic Artist Residency (Wassaic, NY) and the Kutztown University Marlin and Regina Miller Art Gallery (Kutztown, PA) in 2016.
Water clings to my wrists. It has been my fragrance since birth.
- Nayyirah Waheed