“Restless Waters” Art+Music Event= A Splash Hit at ICA San Diego Central

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

Nathalie Miebach, with one of her wall sculptures.

Saturday, November 23^rd, was a busy day in Balboa Park, with museums like SDMA and the Mingei participating in PST ART Weekend, part of the Getty’s Art & Science Collide initiative which encourages the creation of imaginative exhibitions that explore major issues in our world today.

My husband and I were heading for ICA San Diego Central, and a special event: the premiere of a collaborative piece by artist Nathalie Miebach and composer Natalia Merlano Gómez, along with performers from Project [BLANK], a local experimental music nonprofit whose work we had seen and admired before.

Nathalie Miebach, born in Germany and based in Boston, uses weather data to transform heavy weather events like hurricanes, floods, and atmospheric rivers, into brilliantly unusual displays. 

Her Restless Waters sculptures have been on view here since September, and one of the notable pieces is a layered musical score she created when beginning to work on the exhibition. 

“I’m not a musician, but it helps me get down to the story I want to tell when I put something into a musical matrix,” she said.

 One of the artist’s musical scores. Though she generally works in color,
she did this one after meeting her composer/collaborator.
 “I loved Natalia’s music, but I knew it wouldn’t want a colorful score,”
she told us, with a smile.

It was a happy collaboration for both women…who even have versions of the same given name! 

Gómez’s composition was a reflection on our relationship to water as both a life-sustaining and destructive force. It had four movements:  the first, titled I am, included audience participation, with lines called out from a poem written by sixth-grade students whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Florence. There was live and electronic music, some of which sounded like a (muted) hurricane. 

The final movement, I hope, was based on data provided by Nathalie Miebach. And in addition to composing the music, Gómez was one of the vocalists.

Vocalists Jonathan Nussman and Natalia Merlano Gómez,
with master trumpeter David Aquilar.

Teresa Diaz de Cossio, fine flutist.

Maurice and I had already seen and enjoyed Miebach’s exhibition, and the music added a wondrous dimension. Climate change is a dark subject, but both Miebach and Gómez share an essential optimism, which is after all what we need to help find solutions.

Nathalie Miebach’s after-talk, with Project BLANK
Artistic Director Leslie Leytham at left,
beside Miebach’s newest sculpture, Restless Rivers.

Nathalie Miebach: Restless Waters
ICA Central, Balboa Park
Sat Sept21, 2024 - Sun, Jan 26, 2025
1439 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101
Thursday–Sunday Noon to 5 pm
Monday–Wednesday Closed

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net

Read also: Nathalie Miebach: Restless Waters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Central Balboa Park Picked RAW Peeled by Patricia Frischer