Close your eyes and imagine:
The sun's out and you’re drifting down a lazy river, belly-first, on a big floaty.
You’re at the salon, waiting for your mom’s nails to finish drying. You’ve spent the last few hours staring at the pink and blue and purple lights flashing through the waterfall by the counter.
You’re resting on the curb after a water balloon fight, a half-melted Spongebob from the ice cream truck in your hand. The water hose sits in a shallow puddle, slowly leaking into the yard.
These imagination-scapes are played to the tune of audio recordings from Lily Clark’s design objects. Lily Clark was born and raised in Los Angeles – a place not really known for water – but today she claims this important source of life, alongside wonder, awe, and tranquility, as the materials she designs with.
I read something recently – ok, I admit I actually saw it on Instagram – about the Moses sculpture by Michaelangelo. One of the muscles he carved into the arm is only visible when you lift your pinky. This is a very small detail, but it matters.
Studying graphic design and sculpture in school, Lily went on to learn about fluid dynamics, mathematics, and engineering, and she brings all of this into her design process. I won’t go as far as to say Lily Clark is like Michaelangelo, but while what we see are magical water fountains made from ceramics and quarried stone, they are really the product of similar hours logged in close scientific observation and painstaking attention to detail.
I had a chance to talk with Lily on Zoom and dive further into her design work. We spoke about her views on sustainability, science, and scale, about Viktor Schauberger, Sea Ranch, and much more.
You speak about growing up near the Silver Lake reservoir in LA and how this served as inspiration for you. I feel like I see this most in the urban infrastructure project you did, the storm water drains, which feels so different from the fountains you’ve become known for. Can you talk more about that?
Yeah, a few years ago, a friend had just finished building a sustainable home in Highland Park and asked me to lend a hand in thinking about the stormwater capture system. I made a series of terra cotta pipes to replace the PVC systems that are usually found in this context.
This year I’ve been thinking more about the water infrastructure of Southern California. My partner and I are bidding on a project right now for [redacted] that tells the story of water treatment and filtration. It's merging with an interest that has been developing for me this year around flowforms, which were developed in the 1970s by John Wilkes as a way of harnessing water. Our water is often channelized, captured, and treated in hard-edged concrete basins and chutes. But I’m interested in reimagining these forms to better reflect the twisting and vortical movement of water.
You relocated your practice to June Lake for a period recently, right? Which in contrast to LA, is a bit more isolated of an environment. Can you tell me more about this move and what it means for you and your work?
June Lake is near the start of the LA Aqueduct in the Eastern Sierra. I moved there last year for the most intense winter on record. I'm glad I lived up there, just to develop a visceral understanding of where water comes from as an LA native; to be shoveling snow every day, knowing that it was going to make its way down to quench the thirst of LA.
But it was not conducive to making work. It was a decision to move up there with my ex who ended up falling in love with the place, while I came to terms with that as much as I love the nature up there, it's not for me. And now I'm in the opposite world, living in the most industrial part of LA.
I got a studio this year, which is really nice. I'm also now dating a water artist.
Do you remember the first fountain you designed?
It was an ambitious one: a hollow helix meant to have water fall along 3 points on the face. Kind of inspired by an Archimedes Screw. It was really small, like five inches by two inches. And somewhere on the internet there are images of these early experiments. There was a lot of trial and error at first.
Can you talk more about your design process, like what comes first: the material, the form, the fluid dynamic, the project proposal?
I can tell you the ideal scenario: working backwards from observation. When I see a phenomena I’m drawn to while working with water or in nature, I’m immediately lit up and excited to capture and control it. That's what I want to strive for — water first, then form.
How do you typically go about choosing materials for your work?
Besides water, I work with a number of materials: ceramic, stone, metal, and resin. With such a large array of options I can work at a small to large scale depending on the project. Each one has a completely different relationship to water with varying porosity, wettability, and corrosion.
I started working with stone during a residency in Gunma, Japan. I was thrown into a small town where this beautiful blue-green schist had been a part of the local economy for decades – the stone dealers were all now in their 80s. I came without any plans of what material to use, but of course felt that the natural response would be to work with the most prevalent material in the area. I found an angle grinder, watched some Youtube tutorials, bought some travel insurance, and got to work.
You started in graphic design and so I’m sure you learned about white space and how it can be used as a tool in design. I’m not sure if it’s the right analogy but it feels similar to the way you think about water maybe. I wonder if you could talk to me more about that though, what it means to you when you say you “work with” water?
That's a beautiful way to think about it and that's definitely accurate. I think giving yourself time to play and closely observe is a form of white space.
I was working on some new pieces during a trip to Sea Ranch, getting really stuck and frustrated. Then I kind of gave up and just started to play. I realized this beautiful phenomena called non-coalescence can be controlled. It’s something I’ve noticed before when raindrops hit a really thin sheet of water: for a moment the rain droplet will just sit and glide over the top of the sheet of water.
What is the broader source of reference you draw from? When I see your work I think of Toshio Shibata and of the land artists I studied in school. Is there anything you nerd out about that people wouldn’t expect, or something that drives your work that people may not know much about?
There's buckets. My parents were both really into both the light and space movement and land art. I was lucky to be taken on trips to go see Sun Tunnels and Double Negative growing up. That really informed my outlook on art I'd say.
I tend to make travel plans based on my interests, so last summer I went to Venice and northern Italy to experience Carlo Scarpa’s work in person. On that trip we also went to Sardenia to visit the sculpture garden and life’s work of Pinuccio Sciola. Both of their practices are extremely influential to me.
In terms of other inspirations, a huge one is Viktor Schauberger. He was an uneducated Austrian naturalist who learned by close observation. He became an inventor in the early 1900s, first designing logging flumes, tools for agriculture, and then a flying saucer powered by the vortical motion of water.
How about some water-themed quick fire questions to close?
Let’s do it!
Lake or river? River
Lazy river or waterslide? Lazy River
Snow or rain? Rain
Hot springs or cold plunge? Hot springs
Filter or tap? I live in LA so filter
Avatar water tribe or Avatar water tribe? The one with the blue people