Water moves. It reflects, absorbs, distorts. It never repeats itself. River-Rising, a four-channel video installation by Ellen Kozak and Scott D. Miller, is built on these elements. Filmed along three river estuaries—the Garonne in France, the Bilbao Estuary, and the Hudson River—the work isolates the shifting surfaces of water.
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Light plays across rippling currents, breaking apart reflections and reassembling them in unpredictable patterns. Nighttime illuminations from the Venice Lagoon flicker through the sequences, adding another layer of rhythmic motion. Patterns emerge—stripes of light skimming the water, spiraling green reflections, jagged lines pulsing like an electronic signal. Some forms resemble crystals or fractals, others the fluid brushwork of Chinese ink paintings.
Color is in flux. The deep reds and oranges of sunset dissolve into morning gold, then into shifting layers of blue and green. Some passages reduce everything to black and white. Rhythm is unstable—one channel moves rapidly while the others slow to near stillness. Then everything holds, silent, until the smallest shift alters the entire composition. The effect is hypnotic, pulling the viewer into the deeper structures of nature.
Originally shown at the David Richard Gallery in January 2024, River-Rising is now at the Hunterdon Art Museum, a former grain mill on the Raritan River. The gallery sits at river level. Water is just outside. The old mill’s wooden beams amplify the sound, allowing the music to resonate through the space. The score, written for 11 wind instruments, is performed by the Tilted Head Ensemble, conducted by Carl Bettendorf. Clarinets, trombones, and a tuba create a continuous soundscape that moves in waves—sometimes floating, sometimes foreboding. River-Rising is an evolving system. The four video channels and the music, playing on unsynchronized loops, never repeat in the same way. According to the exhibition text, no configuration will be identical for more than 11 years.
Rachel Carson, the pioneering environmentalist and marine biologist, wrote about the ceaseless motion of water, its rhythms, and unpredictability. Her words resonate with the shifting imagery of River-Rising, which captures water as a shape-shifter, a surface in constant flux. Carson wrote, “The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth, it has been an area of unrest… where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, recede, and then returned.” (The Edge of the Sea). Like the water Carson described, River-Rising never settles. It demands attention, revealing movement where we assume stillness.
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River-Rising at Hunterdon Art Museum, January 26 – May 4, 2025
7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ 08809