My work emerges from specific places—places I’ve developed a relationship with over time. There’s something alluring, something that brings me back again and again to the Kansas River, or Kaw, and its 173 miles of ceaseless transformation. I’m drawn into the river’s current and ancient coursing—this ongoing adventure of water and sand and weather over time, which is always different now than it was the minute before.

Some reaches are bound geologically and remain fairly stable over centuries while others have shifted dramatically in the brief time I’ve been watching them. Science can explain much about the river and flow dynamics, the myriad unseen organisms and everything that makes a river a living system. My observations are not scientific in the classical sense, but like a scientist I’m drawn to patterns and observe and record changes. They’re everywhere, from the ripples my kayak makes slicing through the water, and the ones the winds make, to the crazy sand shapes I discover walking along the edges of a sandbar as morning fog lifts.

Lisa Grossman 2024