these systems are not static

 

Artists in the Land Arts of the American West program are proud to present “These systems are not Static”, an exhibition of collaborative and individual artistic responses to place-based research and engagement with environmental justice issues throughout the American Southwest.

Land Arts of The American West artists would like to acknowledge that all of the places we visited and learned from are home to many indigenous communities and peoples. During the Fall of 2019, we visited Muley Point, UT; The Greater Chaco Region, Anton Chico, NM; Valle Vidal, NM; Chiricahua Mountains, AZ; and the Gila National Forest, NM. We met with indigenous activists and other environmental stewards to hear their stories and learn about the work they are doing pertaining to oil and gas development, seed sovereignty, forest ecology, and watershed restoration. This exhibition is a reflection on these experiences through performance, film, sound, sculpture, and more. Join us!

Where:

John Sommers Gallery

University of New Mexico Department of Art

Art Building #84, Room 202

Albuquerque, NM

(Campus Map: https://mmuf.unm.edu/regional-conference/unm-campus-map.pdf)

When: December 2-12, 2019

Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 9am - 12:30pm and 1:30pm - 4:45pm

Reception: December 6, 5-7 pm

Free and open to the public☺

Artists:

Wheeler Fink

Jake Gatehouse

Juana Estrada Hernandez

Hyunju Blemel

Katie Keaveny

Chelsea Call

Nancy Collins

Ben Schoenburg

Mark Williams

Land Arts of the American West: to inspire and support environmentally and socially engaged art practices through field-based bioregional teaching, collective learning, interdisciplinary research, community collaboration, and creative forms of publication and exhibition.

For further information about Land Arts of the American West:

http://landarts.unm.edu/

http://unmlandarts.blogspot.com/

Contact:

Jeanette Hart-Mann, Field Director Land Arts of the American West

hartmann@unm.edu

With thanks to Lannan Foundation for their generous support.

Journal Day 40

By Wheeler Fink

Gila

October 17, 2019

Weaving and Water

Gila Wilderness

By Nancy Collins

15th October 2019

 

We started our week in the Gila Wilderness by meeting with Orion a local craftsman. The Gila is his backyard, so he was the perfect person to introduce us to the incredible landscape. His tools and objects are made with materials found in the Gila.

 

During our walk we harvested some yucca, which Orion then showed us how to make into baskets. What started off as quite a frustrating activity quickly turned into something very therapeutic and satisfying. Learning to work with the yucca and seeing it transform into a basket was extremely rewarding.

I wanted to experiment with the techniques Orion had taught us. I used grasses found by the river to create this tepee shape.  It was interesting to work with different materials; I found that the grass was more delicate which made it easier to weave but harder to keep the structure. The grass also became very fragile when it had dried and it was much lighter. I enjoyed using the basket techniques to create a more sculptural piece and it opened up my mind to how I can adapt methods to create different forms.

 

I began to experiment with my baskets in water; looking at the interaction between the weaving and the water. Where the water would run though the basket patterns where created and it was interesting to observe how the flow of the water was effected by the weave. I also looked at the movement of the basket as it floated down river. The most interesting moments were when the basket was spinning due to the current and the images of it underwater.

  My next project was to create a weave in the water. I used sticks wedged between rocks to support the yucca structure. The process of this piece was really interesting, it felt like I was collaborating with the rocks and water to create this work. There was also something really nice about being in the water as I wove. Again as the water ran through the gaps different bubbles and splashes were created. The bright green of the yucca contrasted amazingly with the rocks and the reflection of the weave underwater was really beautiful.

I then moved onto weaving in the water using just the rocks. This turned into a much looser more sculptural piece.  I am most interested in where water meets the edges of things, whether natural or unnatural. So for this piece I really focused on filming the interactions between yucca and water. I was observing how the water behaved and how my interfering with its normal flow effected its course.

 

These projects were about me taking a traditional technique and seeing how I could then use this to further explore shape, materials and form. I was taking aspects of previous projects, like the patterns of water, and combining them with new skills and ideas. It helped push my ideas forward while learning about a new material.

Thermo-Blanket

Juana Estrada Hernandez 

Gila Wilderness, NM 

October 25th, 2019

You provide shelter, warmth, protection. Your sole purpose is to help people survive. Survive. You’re not used to help better the lives of people. My people. Our people. You have been recontextualized as a material of oppression. A vessel that carries the hopes and dreams of so many.  One that carries the smallest but strongest of heartbeats. Heartbeats that carry past generations of people. Of people that despite the cold floors, thirsty dessert nights, calloused feet continue to step forward. Gambling it all to have a chance to live on the other side of the barbed wire fence.

Ten Minutes in the Glia River

Jake Gatehouse

Gila Wilderness

Blog Post

2019

Ten Minutes in the Glia River                         

During our final trip we were camped in amongst the Gila wilderness, right on the banks of the river. As the semester has gone on my projects have become more and more focussed on water, submerging myself and recording self-portraits, whilst being dunked under the surface. The ultimate outcome of this project is to have an expanse of time accumulated through an amount of images. Intercepted time. The rich relationship between rivers and time therefore led me to further experimenting with time based media and the performative. This was mainly conducted in a two hour-long river walk in which I walked down a stretch of the Gila s in the middle of the river, stumbling and sometimes swimming until i got back to camp. This was to gain I higher sense of the river, to succumb to it and adapt, to view the land from the water in this kind of absurd performance. And to see what intuitive thoughts and practices this experience could evoke.

On the walk up to my start point I found an old water canteen submerged in the mud. It was like ones you see in old westerns, leather and round and cap-less. I decided to keep it with me as I embarked on the walk. And it turned out to be a very interesting instrument to record this experience. A gift from the river. As I walked down the centre of the water I inevitable took a few tumbles, the canteen would fill with water then empty again. The fluctuating amount seemed to have a significance to me and when I eventually finished the walk, I kept the amount of water left in the canteen as a record of this journey, in an old pickle jar garnished with a single leaf that crept its way in.

The next day I wanted to get another recording of the water with the canteen but this time using sound. As I was walking down the river the wind interacting with the canteen would make a soft airy noise  like the ones you get when you blow on the tops of glass bottles. It was interesting to me that this device which was used to capture water eventually was sunken by a body water, these echoes felt like lost sounds of the river so I embarked on a journey up one of the empty washes in hope that the wind would be funnelled down them and I could capture these sounds or wind traveling down trenches made by past water. However due to the sheltered canyon this was an impossible task. It was the lsat day and a very calm one. So I aborted that attempt and went back to the river. Where I conducted a different experiment. I attached one of the lapel microphones to the top of the canteen so the pea-sized microphone would dangle in side the canteen but not hit the sides.  I then dipped the canteen into a section of rapids in the river so technically the mic existed below the surface but protected but the leather hide of the canteen. I then recorded 10 minutes the water traveling past this small installation.

After getting back to Albuquerque I was interested to hear how this experiment sounded. I had been interested in slowing down videos of the water and how this simple manipulation abstracted the image so I was keen to do the same to the sound. I elongated the 10-minute recording to an hour. The result of this was quite extraordinary, the melodic echoes of the internal reverberations of the canteen gently come through at completely random places and a huge ominous bass can be perceived. This soundscape made through the recording of time in this canteen found buried on the river is a result of the decision to make that river walk and how time can be perceived in many alternative ways through the technology we have at our disposal. I have selected the first ten minutes of this now hour-long recording. I would suggest listening with a good pair of headphones if possible!

Interspecies Weaving: burden & beauty

Chelsea Call

Gila Wilderness, NM

October 24th, 2019

Does a falling tree make a sound if no one is in the forest to hear it?

Is performance real if it is not documented and then shared?

Is it possible to hold hope and grief for our current world in the same breath?

How can I portray form from the seemingly formless?

These questions guided my investigations while working in the Gila. In support of my research I re-read Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram. In a chapter devoted to the element of air he states “Air is the unseen enigma that enables life to live.” Fascinated with this narrative I wove a dress of yucca and moved through space, entombing myself with materials from the local plant networks. The process was one of perceived beauty and experienced burden as the yucca and other flora fibers scratched against the surface of my skin. After an unaccounted time of embodied environmental connection I discarded the dress and buried them next to the bank of the Gila, with hopes that the willow will re-root into the soil, regenerating a cycle of new life.

photo credit: Juana Estrada Hernandez

photo credit: Jake Gatehouse

Healing is Progress

HEALING IN PROGRESS.

Healing in Process.

The Process of Healing.

Healing IS progress.

Progress IS Healing.

    I thought the forest service sign I saw in the woods was very interesting. An area that is officially in the process of healing. It made me wonder, what about the other areas of the forest? Are they not in the process of healing? How can you define healing and what does the forest service think of as healing? Is healing more of a process than a finished end goal? Are we all in the process of healing? I responded to these questions in different ways as we travelled to the Gila Wilderness. I tried to look for healing in my surroundings and took videos of little moments that I experienced as transformative or special in some way. I also thought about my own healing, which involves reconnecting with my body and self through the Earth. 

BY: Katie Keaveny

My second attempt at making a hat.

Ben Schoenburg

Gila National Forest, NM

October 25th, 2019

I’m at it again. After the saga that was the first hat you might ask, “why”? 

That hat, which I painstakingly sewed from the leaves of the elkweed or monument plant, was meant to be my symbolic foray into the myth of the cowboy. Instead of making me tough, the process left me emotionally drained and resulted in a highly delicate hat which didn’t fit and looked nothing like John Wayne’s. 

    After my experience in Valle Vidal, the idea of making a new hat hadn’t crossed my mind. I wanted to ride my metaphorical horse West across the vast stereotypical desert as far from that episode of my life as possible. On our first day in the Gila, however, our cohort had the privilege to meet with Orion McDonald whose knowledge of the place, plants and animals helped us begin to understand where we were. He showed us how to responsibly harvest yucca leaves and process them into fibrous strips that could be woven into baskets and twined into rope. As we learned about the potential yucca has as a material I couldn’t help but notice that he was wearing a hat that looked as though it too might be made from yucca. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel just a tinge of jealousy at that moment. “Damn, his hat is sick” I thought, but I’d be darned if I opened that chapter again. As we worked (and for myself struggled) away on our baskets the idea of trying to make a hat kept following me, like a distant rider on my trail. Hoping to put an end to my curiosity, I nonchalantly asked Orion if he had made his hat. He replied in the confirmative and proceeded to demonstrate how to begin a hat by whip-stitching the yucca in a circle. His deft hands quickly turned the green blade of the yucca into four strips of woven material. The middle strip of the yucca included the pointed tip of the plant so that you had a needle on the piece you stitched with. I let on that I was impressed (which I was) but hid any indication that I might do it myself. Although I even tried to deny it to myself, deep down it was settled; I would begin a new hat.  To start the hat I had to find yuccas, specifically narrow leaf yuccas, and harvest just a few leaves from each. I was unable to find many of the narrow leaf variety where we were so I used the banana yucca instead. If you’ve ever cut a yucca leaf you’ve probably also been poked by the yucca leaf next to it. You’d think you would learn after the first time the needle-sharp spear pokes into your flesh, but it happened to me pretty much every time. My first go at whip-stitching was clunky and chunky much like my first basket. I learned that carefully preparing the yucca into uniform strips was as important as weaving it. In the morning I would cut and scrape my strips of yucca and then head out to wander around for the day with the start of my hat in hand. The process of weaving while walking was a bit difficult at first, and I often stumbled around, but slowly it became a relaxing past time while I strolled. 

    Unlike my first hat, this one should be wearable which I am excited for. And I have learned to curb my expectations that it will give me cowboy credibility. For now, I am thinking about it as a hat that is for a person that is not me, perhaps in the future, who is a water-harvester. 

Kathleen Keaveny 

Chiricahuas Mountains, AZ

Journal Day 34

By Wheeler Fink

Chiricahua mountains

October 11, 2019

Chiricauhua

Ben Schoenburg

Chiricauhua Mountains, AZ 

October 25th, 2019

“It is not enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies [or gabions] at the bottom of it?” –Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 1979.

My arrival to the Chiricuahua Mountains did not start well. In less than five minutes of being outside of the van I found myself back inside it, swearing in pain and laughing at my pitiful situation. In my awestruck stumbling I had stepped on a ground hornet nest and swiftly received a bombardment of stings that sent me scrambling for refuge. I eventually left the safe haven of Van 1041 and spent the next week where I had left off, wandering and being humbled, although this time I looked where I stepped.

The next morning we went hiking with the owner of the ranch we were staying at. She took off at a blazing pace, telling those who could keep up with her about the project she started 40 years ago to curtail the erosion that had cut deep into the hillsides. She described how initially the plan she had to build a system of rock piles known as ‘check dams’ or ‘gabions’ to slow the water down was dismissed as impossible by experts given the speed and ferocity of the floodwater. And for the first years they were mostly right, the damns in the eroded areas blew out time and time again. The owner told us how she kept rebuilding them as well as continually expanding the reach of the water harvesting system. After a while, the check dams began to hold, collecting the sediment that the water dropped as it slowed down creating a substrate for plants to establish themselves. The sub-surface water also increased, as the mat of vegetation and soil conducted water into the ground.

 I stood in a lush grove of Arizona White Oaks listening to our host talk to us about the near magical effects that the gabion system had on the land. But I scratched my head. “Your telling me these grassy meadows and shady groves where mostly patches of rock?” I asked incredulously. She patiently walked me to a place she had intentionally left bare so that neigh-sayers and poo-pooers such as myself might see with their own eyes what it had looked like before. I must say I was more than a little chagrinned to see a stream that had cut down to the bedrock and looked more like a waterslide than the other herbage-filled streams. In my defense, the success of the rock check dams was so drastic that they literally buried themselves in soil and vegetation. In some places rock piles four or five feet tall were barely poking up through all of the deposited sand and soil. I had to admit to myself that I had been mistaken, but I couldn’t quite let it go. “Well” I said, gesturing to a small drainage way up on a hillside “what about up there? Are there any gabions all the way at the top?” My patient and gracious host smiled, and said “why don’t you go see?” Game on, I thought and took off up the hill to find where the gabions ended. Soon the terrain became, steep, and I mean STEEP. Despite the punishing angle I was practically crawling up, I carried on, with determination to prove my theory and the willful denial that, at some point, I would have to find my way down. Looking up the hill I imagined an area where there were no gabions, but each time I crested a rise, there would be one there mocking me. The higher and higher I went the more certain I was that I would find the place where the gabions ended. When I got to the top of the ridge I felt elated that I had actually made it, but then quickly realized that I had been proven wrong. As I turned to head back down I looked out across the valley the green ribbons of drainages and perennial streams and thought to myself “damn all of those probably have check dams in them too.” 

Grass

Chiricahua Mountains 

By Nancy Collins 

8th October 2019 

I’ve never given much thought to grasses. I’ve never stopped to consider their value or to appreciate their beauty. I’ve never learnt to distinguish between species. 

Working with Allegra and Perin, from Borderlands restoration, and Velar and Jose Manuel, from Cuenca Los Ojos, opened my eyes to the incredible restoration powers of grasses. Grasses are often encouraged first to grow in damaged or barren land. They provide stability to the earth and support the further growth of wildlife and plants. 

Bear grass, layman’s love grass, Giant Sacaton, Blue Grama, Spider grass, Pinon rice grass, Kane beard grass.

These were just some of the grasses we encountered.

When working on land restoration variety is key and a sign of a health landscape.

For one of our projects I created a ‘map’ of all the different grasses I collected. Created by making rubbings using chalk pastels on tracing paper I was able to capture the individual aspects of each. I wanted to emphasise how many different types of grasses there are, as this was something I’d never realized or appreciated.

Grasses

Juana Estrada Hernandez

Chiricahua, AZ

October 2th, 2019

I was surprised the importance that native grasses played in the eco-system of the southwest. Their role as pollinators, food resources, and restoring the health of soil. I had the opportunity to meet people through Borderlan Restoration and Cuenca Los Ojos that have made it their mission to spread knowledge of native plants and build gaviones to fight erosion. While finding ways to share their knowledge at the local level. If groups such as these can find ways to work across borders while fighting to stop climate change in the southwest area, why can’t we as well?I am witnessing the effects of climate change in my lifetime. I do hope that I can also witness a world movement to stop it as well.  The Coronado Ranch was approximately forty miles away from the border. A footstep beyond that boundary is Mexico. A country where I was born and raised yet now have no means to visit. It was surreal being so close to this boundary. A boundary that tries to intimidate those that attempt to cross it. It has unfortunately prevented the natural migration of terrestrial species along with people that want a better shot at life in el Norte.

Recipe for Soil Sponge

Jake Gatehouse

Chiricuahua Mountains

2019 

On our first day staying at the El Coronado Ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains we were taken on a tour by Velar, the owner. She demonstrated how she was able to ‘read the land’ and decipher how the landscape worked. She showed us the gabions that she placed within the washes up the mountains have transformed the area, which had been subjected to extreme erosion when she first acquired the land. After the tour we were asked to map out what we has leant. I opted to make a recipe for achieving ‘spongy’ soil, a word that has cropped up many times over these trips to describe healthy and rich earth. 

Recipe for Soil Sponge 

El Coronado Ranch

Chiricahua Mountains Arizona

October 2019

Now you’ve heard of a Victoria Sponge, a Lemon Sponge or even a Chocolate Sponge. But please let me introduce to you, the ancient sponge, indeed the mother sponge, the sponge that was perceived to be no more, but a sponge that is making a comeback right here in the Chiricahua Mountains, and is about to sweep across the united states. And don’t worry people this sponge won’t make you pile on the pounds, on the contrary this sponge is already being dubbed the superfood of 2019, and indeed for the rest of time, trust me the health benefits are monumental. Yes, ladies and gentlemen I give you, The Soil Sponge! Or as it is also known, ‘spongey soil’.

Look I know what you’re thinking, “that dry and grainy sediment that falls through my fingers like sand through a Siv? That kicks up when I walk and coats the back of my throat?”

Yes! People today I will share with you the recipe to turn that silty powder into a sponge that will rival any of the sweet treats found in your local Whole Foods bakery section. But let me tell you the best bit, if you carry out these steps correctly, your sponge will stay moist, all year round.     

Step 1: Gabion Construction!

Okay first you are going to assemble our dry ingredients, which is going to take the form of rocks and lots of them! (The odd stick is also welcome). Gather help from some willing people, persuade them with the assurance that their children will have a reliable source of food beyond the age of thirty. Once everyone is on board you are going to leave your decrepit soil alone and instead look at it carefully, read the land and see where it comes from. It should lead to a wash, dry this time of year, that leads up to the top of your mountain. Now, you are going to follow the wash and scale the mountain, with your trusty team and your valiant dry ingredients, I didn’t say this would be easy but trust me the results are delicious!

At the top of the mountain you are ready to assemble your dry ingredients into Gabions! Where they will shortly be introduced into our wet ingredient. Gabions are dam-like structures constructed from the rocks and placed across the wash. At the top of the wash where it is the steepest, each gabion should reach up to the bottom of the one that is ahead of it. As you descend the mountain the space between the gabions should widen as the gradient of the mountain softens. Once all the gabions are in place, we are ready to introduce our dry ingredients to our wet ingredient!

Step 2: Water

As the monsoon and winter rains come, our water will then, mingle and integrate with our carefully placed gabions. And THIS is where the magic will happen…eventually, because my friends this does not happen overnight. You are going repeat this process for up to six years, building and rebuilding the gabions and introducing them to the water. Hey I didn’t say it would be quick but trust me the results are really, really important.

After six or so years your gabion constructing ability will be masterful and the aging process that has undergone between your dry and wet ingredients will have resulted in a harmonious and homogenous relationship, and water will be slowed down by the gabions but still pass through. Filtering the water of sediment and allowing it to trickle into avenues that have not seen moisture in years!

Step 3: See and feel your results!

The water will permeate the land running along the wash and most importantly into the starved soil, and before long the fruit of your labor will begin to show. Your soil will start to become soft and tacky and then right before your eyes and your hands, you will discover the wonder of spongey soil, or the Soil Sponge.

Once these steps have been taken your Soil Sponge is going to be the perfect nutritious delight for your neighbors to marvel at. But crucially after cultivating your sponge, and this is the curveball, don’t eat it! Because do you know who really enjoys it? Native perennial grasses like Hairy Grama, Blue Grama, Giant Sacaton among so many more which will provide a strong and healthy root structure amidst your spongey land! Yes, this sponge is a gift of nutrition, let it absorb and replenish the surrounding landscape, creating a diverse and vibrant environment. Allowing plant life to thrive and eventually feed your belly and your soul!

We are playing the long game here people! Thank you so much to Velar for allowing us from Land Arts of the American west to stay on your property and to her, Jose Manuel, Cuenco Los Ojos and Borderlands Restoration Network for enlightening us to the work they are doing in restoration and the hope that they inspire!

May we all build gabions and save the world!