"Troubled Waters" is up through mid-September at The Art Emporium, 823 Quarrier St., in Charleston. Call 304-345-2787 or visit artemporium.net.

But where does the water come from, what's happening to the places it comes from -- and will the fresh water keep coming?

About 300 curious polystyrene fish and a host of photographs of blown-up mountains pose the question more literally at the exhibit "Troubled Waters," which opened Thursday at the Art Emporium, 823 Quarrier St., as part of this month's downtown Charleston ArtWalk.

Photographer Paul Corbit Brown recalls seeing an exhibit earlier this year of environmental artist Nik Botkin's display of illuminated fish, their bellies filled with trash mostly gathered from the waterways and walkways of West Virginia.

"When I saw that fish exhibit, it just blew me away," said Brown, who has long documented the swath mountaintop removal has cut across West Virginia as blasted rock is then dumped into valley fills that often bury miles of streams.

"We're both trying to talk about what's happening to the water and help people visualize water problems, to make it not quite such an abstract prospect."

Botkin originally staged an even larger exhibit of his fish at Huntington's Gallery 842 this April, on his way to completing a master's degree in sculpture at Marshall University. (He'll start this fall as an adjunct art professor at West Virginia State University in Institute).

His family had a house along a river where he grew up, Botkin said. "During my childhood, I saw these giant fish kills -- almost like you could walk across it. I can still see it. That image stuck in my mind forever."

All that goes into our waterways affects everything that depends on that water -- fish, humans, everything, he said. The "gray water" we flush into streams and rivers produced by human activity, including expired drugs, fertilizer run-off, inadequately treated industrial chemicals and chemical spills, is ingested by fish and aquatic life, he said. "And it stays in their bodies -- it can end up sterilizing or feminizing them."

Meanwhile, the modern throwaway culture -- illustrated by the trash seen inside his sculptured fish -- inundates the word's rivers and oceans, Botkin said.

"My main goal is to start a dialogue between opposing viewpoints. I want to come across as non-hypocritical, because I realize we need all the stuff we have. But we need to consume it more responsibly. I hate single-use items like throwaway plastic wear and stuff like that. Every piece of plastic we throw away will be here, well, forever."

Of course, to make his point he had to use a little polystyrene to make his fish, a substance he notes which can be recycled.

"I did research how to make molds from actual fish. I decided I didn't want to kill fish to do that. I ordered copies of fish made by taxidermists. I made the molds from those copies. Basically, it's a third-hand copy from a real fish."

The fish types on display at Art Emporium are all kinds found in the Kanawha River. Inside the see-through fish is a host of trash -- a dental floss container, smashed cans, beer bottle tops, a condom, cigarette butts and more -- the whole host of detritus from modern life.

"Almost all the items are items I picked up either from riverbanks or just on the ground," he said.

Brown noted the way that the fish on the walls of the exhibit float through the exhibit and about his photos.

"We didn't want his works separate from mine. We wanted to visually give the viewer that sense of how water is, how it just flows everywhere. It's moving into that idea of water being a cyclical entity. And what happens to the fish is happening to us -- we just can't see it immediately.

The fact of the matter is, added Brown, "there's no life without water.

"We need to get serious about taking care of the water on this planet. We all live downstream. We all live downstream from something."

Reach Douglas Imbrogno at doug...@cnpapers.com or 304-348-3017.