“For birth but wakes the universal mind

Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow …”

So writes the poet Percy Bysshe Shelly. Similarly, the new Falls Church Arts exhibition “Flow” gives birth to a universality of thought, but one consisting of many separate streams. Here brooks and rivers flow, animals flow as they race across landscapes, and circles and lines flow in the most abstract of ways.

So much in the exhibition flows in pairs, as in Yi Kang’s pleasant watercolor of two white “Summer Geese,” one with a beak upwards towards the sky and the other with a beak in the ground as they rusticate by a flowing summer stream. Paired also are two koi in a lotus pond in Hana Yang’s Hanji ink artwork entitled “Where Blue Koi Dance with the Lotus.” Here two blue patterned koi fish swim together towards a water lily. Artist Yang notes that the Lotus represents “embodying perseverance, transformation, and awakening.” As the viewer observes from bottom to top, darker tones move to lighter colors towards the top, just as the lotus flower experiences its birth in the muck and darkness and blooms towards the light of the heavens.  

Now we come to a pair of horses.  Jingjing Chen’s watercolor “Neck in Neck” captures horse-racing’s deft combination of skill, practice, balance, timing, and nerve. As the artist explains, the use of color that goes beyond the lines, the forcefulness and thundering sound, is necessary to express the notion of the speed of horse-racing. The use of two yellow umbrellas (also a pair) lends an interesting touch of synergy and completeness to the horse-racing scene.

The exhibition also “flows” across cultures, for example, to a work inspired by the art of the Mithila people in Bihar, India. In Elisabeth Rhyne’s mixed media artwork using hand-carved stamps, “Sea Snake Meets Land Snake,” two snakes of opposite realms meet—perhaps the exhibition could have been called “Pairs!” Depicted are a red snake over a green background at the bottom and a darker red snake within a blue water background. At first, they may seem different but are in the end similar—in fact, each almost a copy of the other, bringing to mind the yin-yang concept of classical China.

For her “Flow” submission, artist Gretchen Damore found beauty in the simple things around her. The acrylic “Crotons,” a close-up on a large canvas best appreciated when farther away, features a popular plant often seen in large pots which decorate office buildings. These plants exhibit vibrant, almost otherworldly colors. This variegated variety of Codiaeum sports darker green leaves towards the base of the plant. As one travels upwards, increasingly brilliant colors emerge as one reaches the top of the plant. The artist’s use of a nearly top-down perspective captures the plant’s arresting appearance fabulously.

Other salient examples of the theme of flow in the exhibition include the flowing waters in Erin Endean’s Italy-inspired “Venice Reflections;” clouds flowing across the sky in Noreen Brunini’s watercolor “Strom Coming;” and a “flowing soul” in Syn Evidente’s gouache and ink on birch panel. Make a point to visit this exhibition in Falls Church between now and November 29 to discover your own “flow.”