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January 10th - 19th, 2025
at Picnic Surf Shapes
Musical Performance, Firday Jan. 10th at 8 PM: A Recitation of the Waves by David Feil and Joe Wozny

Picnic Curatorial Projects is pleased to present David Feil’s Water Psalter, a series of new prints pulled from Feil’s hardbound journal of 149 pen-and-ink drawings made between 2016 and 2019. Originating as a kind of surrogate meditative practice, the drawings reflect on Feil’s relocation to Galveston, learning to surf and experiencing that magical relationship to the water.

Through this journaling practice, Feil found a needed return to the physicality of handwork after a long stint of technology-focused output, where his daily wave drawings developed in conversation with subjects like Raymond Pettibon’s surfers and waves, minimalist computer simulations of fluid mechanics, and Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris, about a group of scientists that encounter an unknowable sentient ocean.

The drawings were made without reference to actual seascapes. Instead, each originated as a few arbitrary marks on the page that were then elaborated upon in a process and with a vocabulary of component forms and gestures that developed with each new iteration.

Feil, an accomplished musician and experimental instrument builder, draws parallels here in Water Psalter, between his study of sound and his daily wave journaling unconstrained, free-formed, and ever-evolving in compositional style.

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David Feil (b. 1983, Irvine, CA) currently lives and works in Galveston, Texas. His personal and collaborative work includes writing, musical performance, visual art, interactive media, and installation. He has been affiliated with Houston-based Nameless Sound and its community of free improvisational musicians since 2002. Sound workshops and performed include the Menil Collection’s Rothko Chapel and Richmond Pavilion, and with internationally acclaimed musicians including Pauline Oliveros, Toshimaru Nakamura, Pauline Oliveros, Ikue Mori, Joëlle Léandre, William Parker, Keith Rowe, Roscoe Mitchell, and Joe McPhee. Selected exhibitions include Box13 ArtSpace, Alabama Song, DiverseWorks, the Joanna, Windows on Main, the Menil Collection’s Fresco Building, and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.