the year my heart turned to water, 2025
a solo exhibition
|
the year my heart turned to water
by amber imrie the year my heart turned to water-- I learned of love’s excavation. how water carves itself into stone, not out of fury, but devotion. each ripple a prayer, each drip a hymn of patience, wearing away the jagged edges until only your curves remain. the year my heart turned to water-- the valleys unbuttoned their blouses, slopes soft with moss led to rivers spilling over like laughter, breaking loose from a bubbling spring. I was soil and sediment, layered and laid bare, split open like a cavern to let the damp breath enter, warm and patient. the year my heart turned to water-- the forest floor quilted itself anew; oak leaves stitched with gold threads and fallen pine needles etching veins into the earth’s skin. — and I stretched out-- skin-to-skin we laid, my heart seeped through our porous divide, and your roots drank deep-- their thirst pulling me under, until I bloomed with the weight of the rain. the year my heart turned to water-- a secret slipped between us, a surrender in the undertow and our edges loosened, as the current recast us in its tongue: To heal a heart is to offer her to the river-- let her drown and reemerge Her hardness dissolves to carry her song downstream water is not hurried, does not demand-- but seduces even stone to let go. ---- The Shadow by amber imrie they are two boulders at the edge of a lake, shaped by the same erosion. a shadow grows in the hollow between them, as if it's remembering what’s fossilized in their strata. a tremor travels through the sediment and they tilt-- not to reach, but to share the illusion of it, a mirage made muscle. But I demand, and so she lets it wiggle-- small and slick through the seam she’d sworn shut. It threaded itself between memory and reflex, repeating what once passed for care-- a pattern smoothed by a clever tongue, sharp as a river stone turned in the mouth. But I demand, and so she lets it wiggle-- slow and sure, through the tight-lipped ceremony. It slipped between gesture and retreat, a habit honed on quiet ground-- a posture practiced like a prayer, still as a breath held in the mouth. But I demand, and so she lets it wiggle-- not from desire, but from recognition: the way certain silences start to feel like home. so She perched barefoot at the way-worn path, where language curled into silence-- still as a spell held in the mouth. The air thickened with all that she'd folded into silence-- it hovered, humid and holy, just as I demanded. But she wiggles from her perch, slipping her toes beneath the surface where the stream runs stagnant. Sediment parts around her ankles, roots blush at the touch of her skin. The moon rises. The shadow shifts. ---- Of Salt & Silk by amber imrie The water moved like liquid glass as I pulled the riverstones from where the current slows. Crawdads scurried from their exposition into the limestone teal. I laid them in silence, one by one-- pressed red soil into the seams, still warm from the storm as she growled from beneath. I asked the trees for their bones and the wind answered in the green hush of late spring. I lashed branch to branch with wind-sworn thread, casting shadow-webs on the floor. She arrived like thunder-- the morning after a storm. Beeswax under her nails, palms warm with the memory of fire. She pressed them to the earthen floor until it glowed along the seams. By morning, a coil of filament and a shard of mica thin as pressed breath rested in her stead on the eastern sill. I let it rest there as dust pooled in the amber light. I ground stone to dust, mixed it with creekwater, and pressed it through cloth until the color could hold truth. I tied stones over every passage-- each one braided by water, threaded with the filament she’d forgotten to hover at my third eye. On the eighth day, light only gathered around the edges of where the mica had been-- a shape left behind, creased and folded by air. I smoothed its edges and tucked it into a cedar box lined with sheepwool and bound it closed with spider webs. The sun refused to rest, and I wove the walls with leftover twine and memories our community couldn’t hold-- a strand of blue yarn snagged in the bramble arch, a dropped friendship bracelet caked in clay, a split zipper sprawled and exposed. The rain tapped the foundation like someone testing the grain, and birds nested in the rafters, their wings stirring the cobwebs. She came like a chill breeze-- through late summer’s swollen dusk, dirt under her fingernails, and her laughter caught in lavender honey. She left a pouch of wild mushrooms at the threshold, and I kept them where the light stayed cool-- their caps softening to press between pages. Light streamed in through the ground-colored glass-- ebbing with the heat of day, drawing back at night, leaving salt in my creases and folds until I glittered like a geode. Thin strands, sewn by passing spiders, crossed the frames without binding them-- porous and strong enough to hold the shape of wind. And they hummed: I am a cathedral of salt and silk. |
touched, 2025
Video/ Performance 3:06 This video piece was censored in the physical exhibition. It was considered too erotic for an exhibition with street-facing windows in Bentonville, Arkansas. We found a middle ground by installing a QR code on the gallery wall. This opened up unexpected intimacy with the visitors and allowed the work to accompany them home, in their pocket.
|
