Land Arts of the American West

Temporary Art Review Essay - Into the Field: Land Arts of the American West

2012-01-06T13:31:00.003-07:00

Temporary Art Review publishes "Into the Field: Land Arts of the American West" an essay account of the Fall 2012 field investigations, by Jeanette Hart-Mann

the ruins are over there and everywhere. Hard to imagine another population in this place, but as we spend more time, it gets easier.

Everyone is drawn to the erosive dry-creek bed. There is a sense of shelter in the intimacy and space that it provides, walls, rooms, passage ways. Thinking about structure, designs and maquettes. Spent a decent amount of time learning about the exacting nature of aligning zippers.

see: I am now aware of rattlesnakes.
Journal Entry – Ryan Henel, MFA candidate in Art and Ecology at the University of New Mexico. 9/18/2011 Habitation Project, Armijo Canyon, New Mexico.

Specified as a place-based studio arts program offered through the University of New Mexico, Land Arts of the American West transverses the American Southwest and Northern Mexico investigating place as a fully discursive form. Our fall semester always begins with the premise that field-based research and practice is stimulated by being experientially located within the context of diverse ecotopes and human interventions. Students and faculty live and experiment side-by-side, traveling rugged territories for up to 50 days while camping, investigating, and making work. Actively engaged in collective and individual arts practices, our methodology induces critical research through praxis. Blurring boundaries of inquiry, the program fosters interdisciplinary exchange, bringing students from diverse studio and academic areas together with scholars, artists, organizations, and grassroots community groups.

Our objectives during the 2011 program were particularly intensive. From the end of August through the end of October, we investigated two overarching conceptual frameworks: Utopian Architecture and The Border. These frameworks took us round and about, from Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake to a rural ejido in Juan Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico. A three-fold methodology wove together this trajectory with activities supported through investigative sites, individual work sites, and collaborative project sites.

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During the Utopian Architecture journey, habitation became a focus of discourse. Corresponding research was conducted at Spiral Jetty, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Arcosanti, Biosphere II, and a wilderness area in El Malpias. Many of these sites provided individual field-based work space for students to experiment. Projects included numerous navigations with buoyant body floats of Rozel Bay in the Great Salt Lake; perceptually unfolding sound and video movements across the Bonneville Salt Flats via sequins and a rat suit; Bark Beetle wayfaring in the subalpine forest of the Grand Canyon; and a personal geodesic occupation of Biosphere II.

At The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah, artists Steve Badgett and Matt Lynch of Simparch joined us for a second year in a series of collaborative experiments as part of their Clean Livin’ project. As points of exchange between art and life, Clean Livin’ brings together the daily function of biologic necessity (shelter, water, power, and waste disposal) as it is directly tied to the projects undertaken at this CLUI residence. Metabolic action and re-action induce and challenge unalienated responses to working in and inhabiting place. Located on what is referred to as “South Base,” we were surrounded by police and military hothouses, an active shooting range, and military munition bunkers now filled with casino junk. Surrounded by military detritus and a seemingly vacant world of salt, artists work at the Clean Livin’ unit while daily responding to the needs of the physical living system in which they inhabit.

Students identified three projects of interest at Clean Livin’: a greywater garden fountain and compost shower, a solar oven, and a metabolically active shade structure. Collaborative groups designed and built each project using mostly salvage materials. After three days, a human-bicycle powered Tetra-Tipi made from art scrap was cruising the salt flats and greywater was trickling down the fountain providing water for the 2010 Land Arts terraforming garden project. On the fourth day, water boiled in the solar oven.

Utopian Architecture as an investigative framework produces a slew of responses, from the romantic to the reactionary. What is habitation in any of these ideological strongholds? How do sensory experiences, historical expectations, and biological needs ground or limit our desires for making place? What do these look like? What does it mean to be dislocated?

If habitation means to be in place, then The Border journey was precisely about the permeable territory between dislocations. This conceptual framework began with a trip south, to the boot heel of New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona to spend five days along the US/Mexico border fence with photographer David Taylor and US Border Patrol Agents. Hiking, driving and scouring the border for “sign,” smugglers, lay-ups, artifacts, and border monuments, our query induced shadows of self and other. On the last day, everyone wandered the border fence in search of proximity. Projects along the massive steel fence, like Nina Dubois’s lean-to, attempted to locate a bodily presence in the margin and puncture its delineation through giving shelter and creating connections.

Crossing the boundary into Mexico, the road took us through military check points where automatic weapons pointed at us from tripods. Our destination was far from the border – a village called Juan Mata Ortiz, where Hector and Graciela Gallegos would show us how to dig clay, process it, hand-build pots, finish surfaces, and paint with mineral pigments. We then fired them under a galvanized metal tub with bark and cow dung.

In Juan Mata Ortiz, art is a craft of skill, identity, history, and the future. It is literally the boundary between several worlds, where economics, labor, culture, and creativity intermesh. Yet, the border is still explicit. These objects have no life without flow, and as violence and security has increased on the border, the exchange between US currency and pottery has slowed, shifting the possibilities of how art objects and the artists who make them influence and are influenced by the contingencies of history.

Crossing back into the US, our Border investigation was winding down. After a brief hiatus into the Gila Wilderness for individual explorations and work time along the river, we headed to Barrio Buena Vista in El Paso, Texas – our final stop.

Land Arts students have been collaborating with the Centro Artistico y Cultural and the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association for several years. This year our time was divided between collaborating with the neighborhood association on developing a bus stop shelter and working with the Centro and Maestra Marylou Valencia to prepare for Dia de los Muertos festivities.

A neighborhood surrounded by highways, a train, a river, a quarry, and a bridge to nowhere, Buena Vista is literally bounded on all sides with the movement of transportation corridors, resources, and borders. For years, the residents have requested a bus stop shelter from TexDOT, so that they might be sheltered from the heat while waiting for a bus in 100-plus degree temperatures. Nothing had appeared. Until now.

At this time, the bus stop shelter stands as a welcome reprieve from the elements and functions as a neighborhood communication board. Stapling of local postings and fliers are encouraged and a laminated bus schedule is displayed prominently. The Barrio Buena Vista Neighborhood Association has been navigating city bureaucracy as threats of demolition continue. None of the Land Arts students would want to see the bus stop shelter destroyed. But, I think, we all realize that the power of our actions are not really held in the material structure itself, or in art itself, but rather in its position as an instigator of learning, experience, and action, challenging the status quo.

When Land Arts returned to the University of New Mexico in late October, the semester was nearly over. But, students return with one last charge: in less than one month, they were to produce the 2011 Land Arts Exhibition, a full-blown exhibition of works in a local gallery. Returning to field research or site-specific works, revisiting studio practices, and/or beginning totally new processes, students took up this challenge by actively responding as artists – doing, making, listening, challenging, and performing.

Land Arts of the American West exhibition is open through January 13th 2012 at SCA Contemporary Art in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gallery hours are Thursdays & Fridays 12-5pm and by appointment.
For more information about Land Arts of the American West please visit:
http://landarts.unm.edu
http://unmlandarts.blogspot.com

Jeanette Hart-Mann, New Mexico: contributor

Jeanette Hart-Mann is an Assistant Professor in the Land Arts of the American West program at the University of New Mexico and is the director of Fodder Project Collaborative Research Farm in Anton Chico, New Mexico. www.seedbroadcast.org

2011 Land Arts exhibition

2011-12-18T21:18:00.006-07:00

The Land Arts show opening was a great success. Thanks to all who came and to all who made it happen.

Show attendees participating in Chris Galanis' Emblemata pro viator.

Celeste Neuhaus Vanishing Point

Ryan Henel Cetecea populous (prototype), Nina Dubois Drift,

Elena Lopez Store Locator and Jami Porter-Lara Mata Ortiz Pot

Detail of Jane Gordon's Daily: Seeking sense of place

Melodie D'Amour Drift: an Exercise in Moving Through Space

Nina Dubois Drift

Ryan Henel Cetecea populous (prototype), Eugene Upston Replication,

Jennifer Etelka Gorst Rat, Jane Gordon Daily: Seeking sense of place

Video loop featuring work by Jennifer Etelka Gorst and Chris Galanis

Jane Gordon Ubiquitous, Elena Lopez Gila River,

Jennifer Etelka Gorst The Grid, Celeste Neuhaus Coruscate Invitation

Elena Lopez Gila River

Eugene Upston Light River

Jennifer Etelka Gorst The Grid

Jami Porter-Lara Cutting Sign 1&2

Land Arts Exhibition opens December 9th at SCA Gallery

2011-11-17T11:20:00.006-07:00

SCA Contemporary Art & ARTLAB Studios

Contact: Sheri Crider/

524 Haines NW/ Albuquerque/NM/ 87102

505.228.3749 scasubmissions@qwestoffice.net

Hours: Fridays, 12-5pm and by appointment

www.scacontemporary.com

Land Arts of the American West

December 9 – January 13, 2012

Reception: Friday, December 9th, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Gallery is open Thursdays & Fridays 12-5pm and by appointment.

University of New Mexico’s Land Arts of the American West is an ongoing experiment of interdisciplinary arts pedagogy based in place. The program emphasizes direct physical engagement within a full range of human interventions in the landscape, from pre-contact Native American architecture, rock paintings and petroglyphs to contemporary art, federal infrastructure, US military installations, and land use systems across the West.

From late August to mid October 2011, Land Arts of the American West spent 48 days living and working throughout the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. The program explored the themes of utopian architecture and the U.S. – Mexico border in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Chihuahua. This group exhibition is a culmination of both collaborative projects and individual works investigating concepts and practices embedded in the experiential complexity of place. Participating artists: Melodie D’Amour, Nina Dubois, Chris Galanis, Jane Gordon, Jennifer Etelka Gorst Ryan Henel, Elena Lopez, Celeste Neuhaus, Jami Porter-Lara, Eugene Upston.

SCA is located one block south of I-40 between 5th & 6th. The gallery is

open from 12-5pm Fridays and by appointment.

El Paso entries

2011-11-08T21:13:00.007-07:00

Jennifer Etelka Gorst

El Paso 10/23/2011

Lying in my tent at night I am surrounded by new sights and sounds, ones that tell me it is almost time to end this journey. Why am I both so fascinated and repulsed by these freeways, planes and electrical wires? Grids that carve out the sky. I have just been ushered out of the forrest and born into this visceral visual auditorial nightmare landscape. The drive wasn’t even that long. I feel so out of context in my tent. I want to close my eyes but the blinking of that electrical plant won’t let me, can’t look away. Familiar sounds of my “herd” give me comfort. I know these footsteps, tent zipper fluctuations, and pre-bedtime rustlings. I will miss the backs of your sleep deprived bobbing heads while traveling in our van, your progressively soiled pants, and failing sneakers, your 6AM faces.

El Paso photo by jg

El Paso 10/28/2011

El Paso marked the end of our second journey, the destination after our stay in the Gila Wilderness, a relatively unspoiled retreat post Mata Ortiz. In El Paso I was able to reconnect with old friends who helped shape who I have become, familiar smiles at the end of a long journey. Both are San Diego based artists and UNM alumni. Roberto Salas, whose property we stayed on while working together to improve his childhood community of Barrio Buena Vista, and Yoshimi Hayashi, my former professor.

Personally, it meant coming full circle in my experience as an artist, specifically in regards to Land Arts, as Yoshi was Bill Gilbert’s student and Land Arts participant at UNM in 2000. Yoshi’s stewardship was not lost on me, his passion and dedication to Land Arts is a result of the initial and longterm commitment to the program by Bill and so many others. It has been an experience that will reveal itself more to me as time passes, re-contextualizing my future, supplying me with an infinite array of artistic fodder, and confirming my role as artist in my community, wherever I choose that to be. Proving to me that I can grow in my art practice anywhere, that boundaries are only set by my personal limitations, and that every person you meet has the capacity to teach you something new, Land Arts has been pivotal. It has shown itself to be a place I can forever return to, the only tools I need are lip balm, a compass, and a tent. I now have that and so much more.

"Mountain becomes Sardine" photo by jeg

group shot @ Mata Ortiz photo by md

"The Belts" collab jeg

"Havalina" jeg

Rat Dance Celebration at Buss Stop photo by jh I think

"Sprain" jeg

El Paso Bus shelter project

2011-11-05T17:07:00.012-06:00

El Paso

Project: Land Arts program production arm Survival Kit Collective (SKC) collaboration with Roberto Salas director of the Centro Artistico y Cultural (CAC) and Armando Carlos president of the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association (BVNA) in design and construction of a bus stop for the community.

Budget: $1,000 in Materials

Participants: Armando Carlos, Nina Dubios, Bill Gilbert, Jane Gordon, Jeanette Hart-Mann, Ryan Henel, Elena Lopez, Roberto Salas, and many others.

Time frame: four days/nights

Day one

Roberto and Armando show us potential sites for the bus shelter. Accompanying us are Sam
Douglas, the documentarist and his crew.

Taking a moment to speak with a bus driver, see what they think of the project.

Armando checks in with a Buena Vista resident who uses the bus.

Initial sketches

Ryan and Roberto looking over design proposals.

Finalizing the choice of site. It was decided to build on city land, across the street from

the westbound bus stop, thus avoiding having to deal with the department of transportation

which has consistently ignored requests from the community to provide a bus shelter.

Back to the drawing board. Plans are worked out...

... a scale model takes form, sun angles are considered.

Day two

Nina, Jane and Elena work on a revised model.

The scale model helps figure out the angles, cuts, and amount of lumber needed for the

actual project.

Construction begins.

Roof structures are brought down the hill...

... and over to the site ...

... positioned...

... and the ground is marked for location of supporting posts.

Digging post holes.

Leveling and bracing.

Post-sunset concrete pour - long day.

Day three

Anchoring roof structure to posts.

Celeste helping pre-drill for the lag bolts.

Roof is up...

... pre-cut slats go in...

Day four

Jenn trims the roof slats.

Elena, Jane and Nina apply stain to the whole structure.

Bill putting up horizontal slats.

Ryan and Bill build the bench.

And done!

Bus schedule and route.

Armando and the whole crew together to celebrate.

Eden Project Update

2011-11-02T14:15:00.000-06:00

Eden Project organizers at Australia National University School of Art have just updated their website to include a three part series on Land Arts of the American West participation in the ANU Summer 2011 Field Studies.

Check out the website: Eden Project Field Studies

las ollas de mata ortiz

2011-10-17T17:46:00.020-06:00

Continuing our ceramics workshop while learning and working alongside Graciela and Hector Gallegos we travelled into the mountains east of the river valley to dig clay.

We then took the clay chunks back to el ranchero and processed it by mixing it with water, filtering out sediment, and increasingly refining the clay into a smooth plastic form. This process took several days: settling and filtering until finally a smooth red clay emerges.

Students continue to finish las ollas by sanding, burnishing and painting. Hector demonstrates his mastery of painting, applying intricate lines, shapes, and color patterns.

The following is a photo collection documenting the last several days in process, including the final firing which occurred today, October 17th.

Group hiking out to clay source in the hills.

Jane digging out clay chunks

Students bagging clay

Hector filtering sediment during clay processing

Student ollas drying.

Nina sanding her olla

Paint brushes made out of old ball-point pens

Hector and Bill painting ollas

Elena painting olla

Gene painting olla

Jane painting olla next to the acequia

Jen painting the leg-less mule, Estaban

Graciela warming pots in the oven

Preparing firing area

Color pots getting ready to be fired.

Wood stacked around the pots

Pots firing.

Students check out ollas post firing

First color ollas after firing.

Making Flour Tortillas

2011-10-17T17:17:00.005-06:00

Recipe by Graciela Gallegos

Ingredients:

1 kg. of flour

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 C oil

2 C water

Directions:

Mix all of the ingredients together in one bowl. Knead the dough until it feels like

clay. Pull off pieces of dough that are about the size of an egg. Form each piece

into a ball. Flatten the ball in your hands into a thick disc about two inches across.

Once all the discs are made, pile them back into your bowl. Lay a towel across the

top of the bowl and let them rest for approximately 10 minutes.

Heat up your cooking surface. Tortillas are best cooked on a wooden stove with a

cast-iron flat top. If this is not an option, a griddle will suffice. Make sure your

surface is hot.

After ten minutes has passed, roll out the first disc on a countertop or other flat

surface using a small rolling pin. After each roll, flip the tortilla over to roll

on the opposite side. This will help the tortilla’s shape to stretch. Continuing

rolling and flipping until the disc is very thin and about 9-10 inches in diameter.

Immediately place that disc on your stove. Allow it to cook for about 45 seconds on

the first side or until the tortilla releases. Flip to cook the other side and press out

and bubbles on the first side with a spatula or hamburger press. After about 30

seconds, flip again and press any bubbles on the second side.

Continue to quickly flip and press bubbles for about 30-45 seconds.

Remove the tortilla from the stove and spread with butter. Begin rolling out your next disc.

Dream of Horses

2011-10-14T20:46:00.004-06:00

Jennifer Etelka Gorst

10/8/11

Journal entry

“ Dreamt I had salt packed in my shoes and my right foot had it’s toes eaten down to the bone... I slept on a cow patty last night but was too tired to move it out from under my tent. I imagine I will want to remove it tomorrow but predict I will forget until last minute and thus sleep on it again. This is heaven.”

10/12/11

“ I sculpted a horse today, rode one at a rodeo and am now sleeping in a horse pasture. This is purely badass.”

Aprendiendo Hacer Ollas: Primer Dia (Learning to Make Pots: Day 1)

2011-10-14T20:42:00.002-06:00

Journal Entry

Elena Lopez

Mata Ortiz

10.11.2011

Aprendiendo Hacer Ollas: Primer Dia

(Learning to Make Pots: Day 1)

Our hosts in Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico are Hector and Graciela Gallegos, known for their stunning pottery. Since Graciela is more skilled at building the clay forms and Hector’s talent is the paintings that adorn the surfaces of the traditional pots, they work together as a team to create finished pieces. We dove right into learning the traditional Mata Ortiz methods of pottery on our first morning in Mexico.

MATA ORTIZ

2011-10-14T20:33:00.004-06:00

Any fears I had of crossing into northern Mexico quickly dissipated once we started driving through Agua Prieta after clearing customs. Although I had never traveled through northern Mexico before, the architecture, the colors, the streets were at once familiar. It quickly transformed from the land of cartel murders and drug mules to the country I had fallen in love with two years earlier.

As we drove east on highway 2 through breathtaking mountain passes, we were able to observe stretches of the rusty iron border wall, the other side of which we had traveled alongside only two days earlier – except everything had changed. The wall itself had changed. What it symbolized had changed.

On the American side in the company of friendly border guards, the wall symbolized safety & security. Restraint and a desire for order. Self defense. Reason. A necessary evil in the face of chaos and the loss of integrity. Keeping violence at arm’s length. Protecting loved ones. Scarcity. Fear.

The demarcation of where one’s body is permitted to exist

On the Mexican side, the same wall symbolized exclusion. Otherness. Ugly brute force. The tragedy of history. Wasted money. Inwardness. Exploitation. An obstacle. A challenge. An insult. Severed families. Division.

The demarcation of where ones’ body is not permitted to exist.

Here on the ranch outside Mata Ortiz, that wall seems thousands of miles away. Falling asleep and waking to the munching sound of grazing horses, corn fields, smiling old caballeros who greet you on the dusty road with a tip of their hat. Grasshoppers bursting all around your foot falls. The soundscape of English and Spanish spilling fluidly over each other like converging acequia ditches. Witnessing the act of mixing clay with water along the side of a well -- arms caked red with earth that smells like blood. Gracielas’ warm buttered tortillas she shapes with her own hands on the wood stove. Esteban’s dogs licking your bowl clean beside a glowing bonfire. Strangers at the rodeo inviting you up onto their gleaming horse for a ride around the crumbling hacienda where the revolution filled the walls with bullet holes. The young boy who cheerfully fills up your bag with ice to keep the cerveças cold.

Walls are built to keep out. And also to keep in.

- chris galanis 10/14/2011

THE BORDER

2011-10-14T20:19:00.005-06:00

In the blue borderland sky

A pair of black crows

Sweeping low

Moving in one synchronized faith

Every turn, considered

Every twist, measured

An invisible instant passes amid

the language linking their bodies

watching them watching us watching them

¡Ahora somos libres!

Thick brown ribbon of bifurcation

unfurls its desire from the banks of the Rio Grande

and slithers into the Pacific Ocean

Broken now only by cold concrete obelisks

Where Juan declared his love for Esther with a sharpie marker

Where Angel Cruz left everything behind

Where history entreats itself for forgiveness

and draws a sharp breath

and shuts its eyes

an instant before

it hurls more broken bodies across the line

Where ragged backpacks instead of shrines

Where plastic bottle instead of chalice

Where Highway 10 instead of sacrament

¡Ahora somos libres!

In the blue borderland sky

A pair of predator drones

Sweeping low

Moving in one synchronized faith

Every turn, considered

Every twist, measured

An invisible instant passes amid

the language linking their bodies

watching them watching us watching them

chris galanis

10/11/2011

Borderlines: Imaginary & Materialized

2011-10-14T20:00:00.007-06:00

On site tracking sign with Lordsburgh, NM border patrol agents, out of focus are Jen Hart-Mann and guest artists John Reid & David Taylor.

David Taylor has cultivated trusting relations with U.S. Customs and Border Protection along with many personal connections to border patrol agents. Taylor is working on a project documenting border monuments along the international line. Our experience has been super charged with much due to Taylor’s standing with Homeland Security,... you could say we got the VIP treatment.

Driving along the borderline in a caravan lead by yet another generous and willing border agent.

The Notion of Nation

Spending time in space where these two nations allowed for new perspective and reflection on the place we associate with the U.S./Mexican border. I am continuously amazed by the emotional and mental charge which can exist in a physical place, an elusive tension that permeates the borderlands.

The view from a peak driving west along the borderline towards the town of Douglas, AZ. The notion of nation extends into the horizon, materialized by two countries dividing one land. Intimidating infrastructure extending as far as to continue into the Pacific Ocean, built and funded by just one country.

Facing South across the landscape one can be witness to the artifacts left behind by Northbound travelers. The obelisk shaped border monument in the left side of frame is one of the many David Taylor has been documenting.

Australian artists’ John Reid and Marzena Wasikowska joined us for the first few days out. While on site in Copper Canyon the artists’ gave an exclusive presentation sharing their latest projects.

Below is a snapshot of a performance piece by Reid entitled Walking the Solar System.

During our time camping in Copper Canyon we decided on a ground less than 2 miles North of the borderline. Our first morning on site Taylor lead our group on a hike to a border monument near a site where Northbound drug trafficking is common, we visited a layup site where smugglers lurk in hopes of undetected passage.

The view from the top of Coronado Peak, part of the Huachuca mountain range .

- Melodie D'Amour

Border Itinerant

2011-10-04T09:47:00.000-06:00

We are preparing to leave for the 2nd half of the fall Land Arts journey which begins tomorrow, Oct 5th and will take us to the US/Mexico Border and beyond. Posted here is a map and list of dates/sites.

View 2011 Land Arts of the American West - UNM - Border Itinerary in a larger map

10/5-10/9 US/Mexico Border, Animas, NM - Workshop with David Taylor
10/10-10/18 Juan Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico - Mata Ortiz Ceramics Project
10/19-10/22 Gila Wilderness, Turkey Springs, NM
10/23-10/27 Barrio Buena Vista, El Paso, TX - Collective Project with Centro Artistico

Art + Environment part 2

2011-10-03T13:03:00.003-06:00

Returned from Reno and the Art and Environment conference Saturday night. Day Two morning presenter highlights --

Amy Francheschini Future Farmers www.futurefarmers.com/ and Patricia Johansonhttp://patriciajohanson.com/ both spoke in the morning session. Great to meet Amy and introduce her to Meridel Rubenstein,http://www.meridelrubenstein.com/, a conference attendee formative in both our lives. -cph
Quotes:
Patricia Johanson "If you want to get anything done, capture the heart of the people." and "....art simultaneously ecological, aesthetic and functional..."

Amy Francheschini soil kitchen http://soilkitchen.org/

Art + Environment conference

2011-10-02T00:16:00.005-06:00

Here in Reno, we’ve had provocative conversation in and outside of the museum’s walls, wonderful light, and an inspiring thunderstorm on the banks of the Truckee river. The air smelled like mountains and rain as I stumbled out into the long light this afternoon, too full of images and people to do more than breathe. Dinner allowed for a lovely gathering with Land Arts alumni and friends at a Thai Restaurant, but alack without Bill, who was at the Center for Art and Environment’s trustee gathering.

Gleaned thoughts of the first day’s presenters (not in order) :

Chris Jordan “Grief is a portal to our love for the world.”

Geoff Manaugh “Maybe the future is small scale and not for humans…landscape future is robot and machine legible landscapes.”

Fritz Haeg “Gardening is a metaphor for how we live and everything we need to know about living on earth…”

Newton Harrison “Take the information out of the hands of the specialists. The people in this world will have to be generalists.”Helen Harrison (reading) “Will you feed me when my lands no longer produce? Will I house you when your lands are underwater?”

Alexander Rose “Why isn’t now longer? Why aren’t we free to see now in a longer time frame?”

Nina Dubois speaking with Elizabeth Ellsworth of Smudge Studio

Cedra Wood, Chris Galanis, Bill Fox and Bill Gilbert

Reno bound

2011-09-28T11:02:00.009-06:00

We are back in Albuquerque for a brief respite before we take to the road again; reconnecting with loved ones and families, repairing/acquiring material, seeing to our various obligations. While catching up on e-mails, I came across this article entitled The Half-Life of History by Bill Fox & Mark Klett which looks at Wednover, Utah and the vestiges of its military history.

Fox is engaged in an ongoing inquiry into how human cognition transforms land into landscape, particularly in the Western U.S. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Several of us will be attending the Art + Environment conference which is being hosted by Bill Fox and the CAE and which will run between September 29th and October first.

The conference will feature presentations by professionals currently involved in the fields of art, ecology, design and architecture, addressing new research and developments in those fields and discuss points of convergence and collaboration between them. There will also be opportunities for students from across the nation interested and involved in arts and environment based studies to meet and share information and resources related to their respective research and work. This is a great chance for students and faculty participating in both the Land Arts and Art & Ecology programs to engage with individuals and organizations who share common interests and goals. Look for follow-up posts this weekend as we immerse ourselves in this meeting of the minds.

Bill Gilbert will concurrently be showing his Physiocartographies work at the Sierra Nevada College Taho Gallery.

Utopian Architecture Thread continued

2011-09-15T23:28:00.008-06:00

Our most recent recent travels have led us back to a certain form of civilization - Arcosanti, and Biosphere 2 -

both located in central Arizona, but offering the opportunity to experience and to investigate two very different and contrasting models of Utopia. The community of Arcosanti describes itself as "an urban laboratory focused on pursuing lean alternatives to urban sprawl through innovative design with environmental accountability". The slow, incremental construction of the settlement has been mainly financed through the sale of bronze and ceramic bells crafted on-site, and through ongoing workshops that draw people interested in immersive, hands-on learning.

Long-term resident and work crew leader Jeff Buderer kindly acted as our guide, describing different construction techniques and innovations developed over the years and sharing his thoughts on what the future may hold for the community as Paolo Soleri, the visionary architect who dreamed Arcosanti - steps down as president of Cosanti, the foundation that oversees educational and architectural projects.

We have come here to immerse ourselves in Arcosanti's model of learning by doing and using what resources are at hand. Jeff has identified a number of issues that need to be addressed, including retaining walls and various runoff mitigation projects. The group decides to help him with a project he has inherited from a former resident - a worm farm, or vermicompost operation that was abandoned as soon as it was set up. Jeff has been doing his best to maintain the operation, but thought we might help him make the area more functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Before.

After.

Biosphere 2 is a completely different world. A high-tech research facility that was built quickly, with massive influxes of money and essentially abandoned by the original crew. The story behind the original project is a fascinating one. "Dreaming the Biosphere" by Rebecca Reider offers what is perhaps the most engaging and objective interpretation of this contentious project. See also "The illusion of the end" by Jean Baudrillard, chapter entitled "Maleficient ecology".

Workshop and soundwalk with Andrea Polli

2011-09-15T22:49:00.007-06:00

Tipover Canyon is a relatively remote wilderness area near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. In this alpine meadow, we met up with Andrea Polli, Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering at The University of New Mexico, to participate in a soundwalk and to experiment with different types of recording devices. She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate through sound (called sonification). The idea of the soundwalk comes out of the field of acoustic ecology and is a way of focusing our awareness on the sonic environments we inhabit. Andrea led us through some exercises to help fine-tune our capacity to map out the area with our ears, rather than using visual cues. The different types of microphones that she put at our disposal offered us a chance to experiment with different ways of interpreting and translating the space via sound.

During our five days here, the rain proved to be the dominant acoustic and environmental presence.

It rained. A lot. i liked it. Others were not so keen - Jane Gordon

This site was also our first real opportunity to work on our own individual and collective projects.

Forest intervention by Jane Gordon

Jennifer Etelka Gorst, aka Birthday Rat

Harvesting wild plants for tea. Part of Jenn Hart-Mann's "Tisane" project.

Sharing tea and stories inside Nina Dubois' geodesic dome.

More clean livin'

2011-09-14T20:30:00.005-06:00

View more images here of the projects completed as part of our collaboration with SIMPARCH. Thanks to Matt Lynch and Steve Badgett for sharing their photos.

Daily livin'

2011-09-08T00:55:00.007-06:00

Our first “official” collaborative projects began this week working with Simparch at Clean Livin’ on the South Base of CLUI. Matt and Steve (the duo behind Simparch and Clean Livin’) presented our group with some general ideas of projects that they wanted to see realized on the compound, which we used as a starting point for a collective brainstorming session.

We soon found ourselves with a long list of ideas, from technical improvements to their various composting and water systems to strategies that would keep their Target Museum guano free, while allowing the bats to maintain their habitats there.

Eventually we whittled down the list to four do-able projects based on our available work time and individuals’ interests: redesigning the grey water system, designing and building a solar oven, building a portable shade structure and digging a hole for their new 550 gallon water tank. We broke into three groups, each heading a different project, and all agreeing to put in time with the hole.

As my team gathered and started creating a design for the shade structure, I realized that I was a little rusty with my collaboration skills. As a graduate student whose time is mainly spent on solo work, working with four other artists (all highly creative and with varied points of view) in a limited time frame and with mostly found materials, presented a new set of challenges beyond the actual execution of the project. However, being able to work with Matt and Steve, a great example of what successful collaboration looks like, I like to think that, as a team, we managed the ups and downs of collaboration throughout the week as well as we could. For myself, I know that what I took away from this week extended beyond how compost water systems work and how to countersink a screw. (Although, it was exciting to learn these things.) I leave CLUI this week with a new understanding of what collaboration looks like: flexibility, an open mind, skill sharing, surrender and perhaps most importantly, a respect for each other and our ideas. - Elena Lopez

Ryan, Melodie, Jen, Elena and Matt tackling the portable shade structure, or tetra-tipi.

Test drive.

Celeste and Eugene cutting pieces for the hexa solar cooker

Jane and Jami figuring out the best way to redirect the gray water and make the system more user-friendly

Reflective-tape arrows indicating direction of flow

Jane and Nina working on the grey water feature

Grey water cascading into mulch/garden bed

Nina and Jenn installing a tension line to support grey water

irrigation line from the tower to the compost pile.

Jenn and Jami's grey water compost soaker.

Utopian Architecture thread

2011-09-07T23:57:00.008-06:00

This first part of our semester is focussed around an exploration of the particular, or peculiar brand of utopian architecture and settlements that have developed here in the Southwest. Though we have done some reading on the subject before leaving, there has been no formal discussion on the subject, and it is interesting to try and pinpoint when and where our investigations have begun - to locate the thread of that conversation within our journey so far. Perhaps it was at the Spiral Jetty, in the act of banding together and deploying the cook/technology tent up for the first time - extracting the carefully packed poles, tarps, tables, stoves, cookware, solar panels, laptops, etc. - and beginning to inhabit the modular home-base that will provide a comfortable living and working space throughout the course of our itinerant journey.

Or maybe it began at the Sun Tunnels where we immediately colonized the art because it invited us to do so, and spent the day inhabiting the cylinders in numerous creative ways. The surrounding landscape burst into sublime displays of color and light at dawn and dusk, but for most of the day it is oppressively bright and hot here. The tunnels are surprisingly hospitable spaces in a not so hospitable place - cool, shaded and curved in a way that cradles the body. The fact that there are four of them and some distance between them allows a certain welcome sense of privacy and retreat, but mostly the site prompted a flurry of collective projects. The group was primed for this experience - we’ve been getting along rather well so far, and it seems that the tunnels just channeled that sense of communality and allowed it to manifest itself in more concrete ways. Their scale is human, welcoming, protective, open and they all point towards a central plaza-like area.

In that one day, the tunnels alternately served as napping quarters, reading room,yoga studio, movie set, workspace and concert hall. At night, after an etherial Tibetan bowl concert performed by Melodie, we laid out our sleeping bags and mats inside the concrete tubes and went to sleep - sheltered from the howling winds but able to gaze up at the densely starred sky, beautifully framed by the concrete oculi.

After the Sun Tunnels, we headed for Wendover where we have been staying at the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) Residency Support Uni t, which is located on a semi-abandoned airforce base. There is much to be said about the military history of Wendover, it’s proximity to the Boneville Salt Flats, to the Great Salt Lake and to nuclear testing and radioactive waste sites - more than can be adequately adressed here. In a nutshell, as Matt Coolidge, CLUI director shared with us today, the Wendover residency provides a context for artists and anyone interested in the relationships between land, land use and the built environment to investigate, engage with and to propose innovative forms of interpretation of this fascinating place that exists on the edge of the void.

Here we met up with Steve Badgett and Matt Lynch, core members of artist collective Simparch, and who, as the name suggests, investigate simple architecture and DIY approaches to building, amongst other things. Originally drawn here by the residency program, Matt and Steve have spent the past 8 years developing a satellite facility at South Base, a few miles south of the unit. Clean Livin’ is an on-going, constantly-evolving experiment in low-tech, sustainable building technologies and has allowed for a different kind of human presence to evolve out of this once-abandoned site. It is a place where the line between dystopia and utopia is not so easy to draw.

“Because it is located off the grid on the edge of a landscape void, the project is also about autonomy, isolation, making do with a bare minimum, making something from next to nothing and exploring the basement of one's will...I see the project as about starting over from the ruins of the military, about the birth of the atomic age, and the possibility of global Armageddon. It's about making lemonade from lemons" - Matt Coolidge - from Simparch’s website.

Spiral Jetty

2011-09-07T17:06:00.003-06:00

The surreal looking glass that is the Great Salt Lake,

breathes deep and slow in zoomorphic forms.

With the sunrise crystalline foam collects on the fringe,

glistens in sunbeams all afternoon,

black rocks made porous by alkaline resonance,

scatter across the shore.

- Melodie D'Amour

Sun Tunnels

2011-09-07T09:02:00.005-06:00

Though currently at CLUI, working hard at South Base on various projects with Simparch, I stopped to process some images from our time at Sun Tunnels and wanted to post this panorama. The image shows the sun rise on the morning of September 2, 2011, taken from the marker in the center of the piece. The tent frames the rising sun, not far from directly between the eastern and southern tunnels, as you would expect 19 days before the Fall equinox.

- Catherine Page Harris

Photos by Jane Gordon

2011-09-04T19:54:00.007-06:00

Spiral Jetty

Sun Tunnels

Wendover

Polaroids by Chris Galanis

2011-09-03T08:20:00.007-06:00

Near Moab, Utah

Green River, Utah

Wind farm near Spanish Fork Canyon, Utah

Spiral Jetty at sunset

Tar Sands

Sun Tunnels at night

Hot brakes and unexpected encounters

2011-09-02T17:49:00.028-06:00

Day 2. Shortly after departing from our camp site near the San Rafael Swell, the breaks on the cargo van overheated and seized up as we descended the San Rafael Reef.

After some low-tech damage control, getting the breaks to cool down a bit by pouring water on them, we very slowly, very carefully made our way to nearby Green River, UT to find a mechanic. We made the 15 mile drive in about an hour. The mechanic that we found right near the exit assured us that the breaks were ok, just overextended from the steep downgrade, and that we could continue on our way.

This mechanical setback turned out to be somewhat of a blessing in disguise. Since we were here, we decided to head into town, both to test the breaks before heading on the road again, and for the mandatory pee break. Green River is known for, well the Green River, the chief tributary of the Colorado River. The small town serves as a hub for people embarking on rafting trips and for expeditions into the surrounding canyon country.

We parked the passenger van in front of Ray’s Tavern – famous amongst boaters and adventurers, and were graciously offered some fresh coffee. Soon afterward, Jenn and Ryan came back from their test drive and reported having seen a group of people on bicycles doing “some kind of social practice thing”. We decided to investigate.

The cyclists, riding in circles in front of a renovated storefront, waving American flags, were members of Epicenter, a sister organization to Habitat for Humanity, and the USDA Rural Development Resource Center, and creative design studio.

We talked with crewmembers Maria and Haley about the history and nature of the project. The Epicenter was formed by recent architecture graduates who participated in the unique and socially engaged Rural Studio program at Auburn University.

Interns from different fields come to help with the design and realization of projects that aim to revitalize the town of Green River by renovating buildings, developing affordable housing, holding a music, art and film festival as well as promoting alternative means of transportation. Their motto is “We’re getting things done”.

We are crafting an alternative model of practice, one that can accommodate our fervent desire to collaborate, to provide “shelter for the soul”, and to emphasize place and circumstance – From the Epicenter Tumbler website.

There is an undeniable sense of kinship between the Rural Studio, the Epicenter and the Land Arts of the American West program – a tendency towards cross-pollinization and collaboration and working to build an intimate and engaged relationship to place.

It is no coincidence, for example, that Sam Douglas the author of Citizen Architect, a recent documentary about the Rural Studio program, is currently working on a documentary about the Land Arts of the American West program and is planning on joining us in the field during our second trip in El Paso. And perhaps it is no coincidence either that this morning’s mechanical setback has led us to these kindred spirits.