Clay Motion
By Blaise Koller
Muley Point
October 7, 2018
Dripped clay down a few rock faces over the past few days. I’m sure having just gone to the Greater Chaco area, and being around all of these fracking sites and hearing the constant motor sounds, and knowing that Bears Ears is being threatened by the same kind of fracturing changed how I saw these flowing forms spilling down the rocks. It also made me think about my own participation of facilitating the making of these forms. Watching the clay water flow from high on the rock, eventually onto the ground and into the soil, I thought of the spreading effect of the chemicals being injected into the ground to extract natural gas. Although I started the process of dripping the clay, it moved on its own, spreading and moving downwards. This initial action made me contemplate the initial actions of fracking, and even if the infrstructure is removed or the well shut down, the damage has already been done. Those actions and their known and unknown consequences cannot be taken back after the ground, and all the things that are in relationship to it are damaged in such a violent and forceful way. The colors of the clays made me feel differently about their meanings in my mind too. I think from the culture I grew up in, I associate this yellow green color with sickness, disease, something toxic. Nuclear waste, even if nuclear waste might not literally be that color or near it. So dripping it near these precious tinajas that hold the water that falls from the sky to feed the small life that lives in them felt slightly wrong. However, with the grey-green clay, it seemed to me to blend in more with the rocks and colors around it, seemed to fit into the landscape more, even though both the clays were from the same spot, in between two huge rocks.
