We Are Water

The mirror-polished spheres that compose the works from Hurst’s Water Series suggest bubbles rising in water. In the contemporary world, where people increasingly are inwardly focused and strongly divided on many issues, the bubbles symbolize the elements of our shared humanity rising to the water’s surface. In this way, Hurst’s Water Series strives to represent the common ground in the human experience.

Works in the Water Series are inspired in part by a commencement address by author David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water.” In the speech, Wallace highlights the importance of choice in how we experience and think about our world. He posits that it is within our power to see even the most mundane and frustrating parts of contemporary adult life "as not only meaningful, but sacred.”

Hurst also finds inspiration in the disciplines of mathematics and astrophysics; in particular, a principle of quantum mechanics called “von Neumann entropy.” Expressed as a complex mathematical formula, the principle encapsulates the philosophical idea that, without knowing for certain, the unseen world can be more than one thing at the same time. Viewed through this lens, the “bubbles” in the Water Series represent events occurring within the “water” of our shared experience. They encourage viewers to see their world from new vantage points and, in doing so, to see the marvelous possibilities that exist all at once.