“In deep water” is an idiom that means “to be in trouble” or refers to going out into the unknown or “deep end.” “Thin places” comes from a Celtic proverb that says the space between Heaven and Earth is only three feet high, a thin place where one gets a glimpse of both worlds and a new perspective.

“Deep Waters, Thin Places” grew out of my discovery that Embudo Dam is a fantastic site for exploring creativity. The dam sits in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Situated in a public park with hiking trails, the dam is part of the city’s larger flood control system. It’s a hybrid space: not exactly urban, not exactly natural.

Cultural geographer and landscape scholar J. B. Jackson wrote that there is no inherent character of a space; it’s in how we use it. With that idea in mind, I explore the site as a creative space, taking cues from its current alternative uses.

I see it as:

• a space to think or explore

• a stage

• an echo sound chamber

• a place to come of age, where teenagers break bottles and have their first kiss

• a metaphor for an internal state of being (we build “flood control systems” within ourselves to live in the world)

To show this space and express these ideas, I made five lithographic visual scores based on engineering plans for Embudo Dam that I received from an Albuquerque municipal engineer. Performers then interpreted these visual scores on site. Each score, acting like a diagram or map, has a movement shape, a reference to location, and a wash that represents a flood. The image became the prompt for an exploration of that space. I recorded all of the improvisational performances with my camera and heavily edited the video for a choreographed experience of the work. The performances were later shown as video and prints together with other sculpture and sound works in a show.

The work shines new light on the Embudo Dam or other infrastructure, offering a new way to think metaphorically about our everyday environment. How do we navigate the liminal spaces in our daily lives? As the architect of your own inner landscape, when do you exercise control and when do you let it go?