drought sculptures (2025)

Movements

I. open house

II. our lady of lithium valley, pray for us

III. drought resistant landscape

IV. the seas may sink tomorrow…

V. …the ocean will remain.

Written: April 2025 — June 2025

Duration: 8’

Instrumentation: violin, viola, piano (*piano trio arrangement also available)

Program Notes

223 feet below sea level with a population of 313 (2023), the community of Bombay Beach, California is situated along a remote stretch of the Salton Sea. What was once a vacation hotspot is now a ghost town. From the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

"...the current Salton Sea was formed when Colorado River floodwater breached an irrigation canal being constructed in the Imperial Valley in 1905 and flowed into the Salton Sink…because the Sea is a terminal lake, increasingly concentrated salts have resulted in a salinity that is currently 50 percent greater than that of the ocean. The increasing salinity and other water quality issues, including temperature extremes, eutrophication, and related anoxia and algal productivity, are adversely influencing the Sea's fish and wildlife resources."

Today, the beach is home to a massive sculpture garden of sardonic, anarchist, iconoclastic, environmentalist, and/or site-specific installations that are free to view. I visited this garden in February 2025 on a spontaneous road trip with my boyfriend. Each artwork, combined with the desolate landscape, dusty winds, and pungent smells of salty chemicals and dead organisms, transported me to a world different from my own. Everything feels retrofuturistic, neither past, present, nor future. I was compelled to think about the stories of the people that have lived in this community and how environmental change has drastically transformed their lives. Despite all these factors that would drive others out, the inhabitants of the "Lithium Valley" remain. I have chosen a few of my favorite sculptures from Bombay Beach as the inspiration for this piece.