Curator’s Commentary on Recurrent Riparian Ritual by Jack Bowers
Recurrent Riparian Ritual is a profound meditation on time, impermanence, and the natural choreography of earth and water. Jack Bowers captures not only the physical topography of Medano Creek’s shifting sands, but also the invisible rhythm of recurrence—a ritual performed endlessly by the land itself.

Long before the advent of technologies like Google Earth or 3D printing, Bowers was intuitively mapping terrain in three dimensions. His method—preserving the sculpted surface of sand shaped by flowing water—transforms a fleeting natural moment into an enduring object. It reads as both document and poem, anchoring the viewer in the quiet marvel of geological time compressed into a human-scaled gesture.

That this work was first presented as an unfired clay installation at the Aspen Art Museum in 1980 speaks to its conceptual strength. It anticipates a future in which technology would try to replicate what Bowers accomplished with fieldwork, hand tools, and attentiveness to place. The acquisition of this work by both UC Boulder and a Denver hospital underscores its resonance across settings: as healing image, as environmental reflection, and as art that slows the gaze.

Bowers does not seek to dominate nature but to listen to it—to freeze what cannot be controlled, and in doing so, offer viewers a portal to presence.