The fifth element

Keren Tully Arizona Daily Wildcat Catherine Nash's "Wound Within" is one of her many pieces in the Journey exhibition. The show features a combination of installations, sculpture and photography.

The beauty of traveling is that it opens our eyes to new worlds and experiences. We don't just see new people and cultures, but new lands shaped by the elements. The current UA alumni invitational The Five Elements: A Journey explores different images of travel and journeys. Showing at the Union Gallery, this is the first collaboration between UA graduates Catherine Nash and Robert Renfrow.

The Five Elements: A Journey alumni invitational by Catherine Nash and Robert Renfrow runs through April 8 in the Union Gallery in the Memorial Student Union. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Nash and Renfrow try to link together the idea of journeying with the five elements according to ancient Greek and Druidic philosophies: Earth, air, fire, water and an elusive spiritual fifth element. In Greek, this mysterious element was called "ether," or "nwyvre" in Druidic. Ether was thought of as a binder that held everything in the universe together, and was often compared to a cargo ship or boat. This fifth element provides the artist with a connection between journeying and the elements, though this allusion is obscurely metaphysical. As a result, the exhibit seems to address two disparate themes, rather than one.

Nash's boats are the central and most striking pieces in the exhibit, embodying the idea of journeying and the fifth element. The metaphor of boats is very close and personal to Nash. "Boats are immersed in my childhood memories... they remain deep in my inner life," she says. Nash studied in Japan where she learned paper making techniques - these boats are the result of her studies, and are absolutely beautiful. The frames of the boats are composed of wood branches, wrapped in handmade paper. Though reminiscent of ancient Mediterranean vessels, the look is innovative and unique.

Nash composes her paper boats in a variety of settings which characterize the different journeys we go through in life, and the new experiences we learn from each. "Rooted Boat" seems to be growing forth from a tangle of roots that weave their way into the frame of the boat itself. "Stormy Sea" is a radically different work, with the paper boat caught in a twisted bunch of thorny branches as a narrative of a more troubled journey. Another group, named "Nesting Boats," shows a series of progressively smaller boats rising from a boat-shaped straw nest.

Keren Tully Arizona Daily Wildcat "Elemental Conditions" by Catherine Nash and Robert Renfrow opens the Journeys exhibition in the Student Union Arizona Gallery. Many of the pieces invite you to put on gloves and touch them.

The large installation is a collective effort by Nash and Renfrow, with an eight foot long paper boat hanging over a bed of straw. There are even padded seats to rest on, so that exhibit-goers can soak up the atmosphere of the small room while surrounded by abstract images of the elements.

Aside from the numerous paper boats, there are many other intriguing images. Renfrow's photographs deal mostly Southwest subjects like petroglyphs and the mission at Tumaccori, with faintly superimposed images over them. He has some interesting light-boxes as well.

Nash also has some beautiful watercolors, with human-like bodies surrounded by aquatic blues and greens. Anyone eager to play with some of the works will be delighted with the number of hands-on pieces, especially the Renaissance-style encyclopedia called "Elemental Connections."