“Stream Crossings: Where the River Meets the Road” August 5-27, 2022 at WallSpace-LNK

with an opening reception Friday August 5, 5-8pm…

Streams, creeks, and rivers meander their sinuous curves across Nebraska’s landscapes. These ribbons of water intersect with the “relentless rectangularity” of our road grid, one-mile squares laid out over state. “Stream Crossings,” large-format color photographs, examines some of the places where the river meets the road. Photographer Michael Farrell searched out the bridges and culverts people imposed on the waterways, and discovered some surviving, handsome steel-truss bridges that add their own aesthetic element to nature’s scene.

Only Alaska has more river miles than Nebraska, so these intersections of angles and curves are frequent. The steel bridges are rapidly vanishing, in some cases replaced with concrete structures that barely differ from the roadway. In other places, nature is slowly but inevitably encroaching on abandoned wood and steel. An essay by Farrell traces the development of the land survey that created roads and bridges. It poses questions for the future, too. If our water is considered to be a resource owned by the public, what of these complex river systems? How can we divorce our watercourses from the life-giving water that runs through them? Isn’t a river, creek or stream an integral natural system overflowing with all manner of life and complexity – including our own? Who among us will be empowered or emboldened enough to dare to speak out or to act on behalf of our essential yet increasingly vulnerable watercourses?