Text by Barbara Aria
Calligraphy by Russell Eng Gon

Like all of nature's primal forces, water defines itself in motion and by its place in life's eternal cycle. Water nourishes all things; it is in the words of Kuo Hsi "the blood of the universe." It flows on timelessly, swirling around every obstacle, yielding to the shape of the land and shapint the land in its course. "Nothing is so gentle, so adaptable as water,” wrote the philosopher Lao-Tzu, “yet it can wear away that which is hardest and strongest.”

This pictogrammatic character for 'water' has evolved over the ages, starting out over three thousand years ago on bone carvings as a gently undulating line between two rows of short strokes. Water: the living flow and eddies of a stream.