Category: off the rez

community, off the rez

La Isla Memory Project

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Shortly after the Great Depression newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented by Executive Order a public works program to get US citizens back to work called the New Deal.  A program that emerged was called the Works Progress Administration or WPA and one of the communities to benefit from the WPA projects was the high altitude community of La Isla (located in San Luis Valley of southern Colorado).  In the mid 1930s a one room school house was constructed for this rural, farming community which was used until 1959.

I was invited by CU University Field School to spend a week this past spring learning the history and hearing stories of people in this cattle ranching and farming community with a large population of people who trace their ancestry back to the Spanish colonialists who passed through the region beginning in the 1500s.  I interviewed people who attended the one room school house made of adobe hearing anecdotes of the simplicity of their lives in the 1950s.  Family photos were used as reference images in the murals.  In talking with former La Isla student Walter Perea he remembered that not many people had cameras back then but his mom had a Brownie camera with which she’d document their lives.  He was able to find her camera and a photo of him holding it is included in the fabric collage.  He also remembered going to school with a Flintstone lunchbox and while he couldn’t find that I was able to locate a used Flintstone lunchbox from that period at a small antique store in Antonito, CO.  An image of this also appears in the fabric mural.

My experience in this community was brief but I was there long enough to begin to get a sense of the interconnectedness of families in the valley and how people supported one another over time to build community.  I got to attend a large birthday celebration for a 92 year old matriarch which reinforced for me the value the community placed on family and the wisdom of elders.  Like the stories I heard from individuals in the community the birthday celebration was an opportunity for people to reflect on the interconnectedness of their lives.  While I often don’t have difficulty leaving a installation spending a couple days watching the fabric mural under different lighting conditions over the course of a day and being mesmerized by the movement of the fabric to the subtle breezes in the morning and evening to the manic movement of the fabric midday as the wind picked up I felt like narratives emerged from the fabric that made this piece hard to leave.

Thank you to CU Field School, Ron Rael, Drew Ludwig for assisting and to the former students of La Isla who shared their stories with me.

 

This text comes from a recent Facebook post by Cletus Perea… “So Mercy Ann Gallegos And myself decided to have a Mini Class Reunion in our 1st & 2nd grade schoolhouse. This is also the place of The La Isla School Mural Project where some of our ancestors are featured. Mercy was actually raised by the 2 elderly ladies in the picture. Her Grandma Lupita Sanchez, Great Grandma Cirila Valdez And her Mom Berta Ortiz as well as my Dad Juan Perea
Felix Sanchez And my Grampa Estevan Perea.
Then we went to Los Cerritos Cemetery to celebrate our ancestors life and our Blessings.
My cousin Mercy comes from Albuquerque so it was nice catching up.
Mercy, Thank You for your time and an enjoyable morning. ♥️🎶🎵🤠
By the way, that was me on the horse 62 years later. 🤠

 

 

 

Cletus with his cousin, Mercy Ann Gallegos, standing by the photo of himself as a little boy wearing a suit with one of his brothers and his mom, circa 1957.

 

 

 

 

 

off the rez, spoken word

we are the people who are darker than blue (art space – new haven, ct)

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If your mind could really see
You’d know you’re color the same as me
Pardon me, brother, as you stand in your glory
I know you won’t mind if I tell the whole story

Get yourself together, learn to know your side
Shall we commit our own genocide
Before you check out your mind?

I know we’ve all got problems
That’s why I’m here to say
Keep peace with me and I with you
Let me love in my own way

We people who are darker than blue
Are we gonna stand around this town
And let what others say come true?
We’re just good for nothing they all figure

A boyish, grown up, shiftless jigger
Now we can’t hardly stand for that
Or is that really where it’s at?
We people who are darker than blue

“We Are the People Who Are Darker Than Blue”

Curtis Mayfield                                           1970

In 1998 a physician buddy who was working for the CDC in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire managing a HIV education and treatment project invited me to shoot a photo essay on the work they were doing. We spent time in hospitals, outreach clinics that did hiv testing + treatment, birth control counseling, and with hiv/aids support groups.  Although it was an emotionally exhausting 2 weeks I witnessed a lot of heartfelt support + love amongst the people impacted by the disease. I witnessed 20 people burst into cheers and cry tears of happiness when they were able to establish a phone connection with one of their members of the AIDS support group.   The last place I visited was an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS or whose parents died from AIDS.

One might suspect an AIDs orphanage in an impoverished country to be a depressing place but I have honestly never seen a place so much spirit, hope and optimism. Kids, given the opportunity, will be kids.

(my artist statement for the group show “between beauty + demise” art space new haven, ct.  curated by erin joyce.)

off the rez, Uncategorized

American Domain

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Humanist and documentary photographer Dan Budnik is best known for his black and white photography from the civil rights era.  It was Dan’s photo of Dr. King that appeared on the cover of Time magazine when Dr. King was assassinated.  After covering the civil rights movement from 1964 – 66 Dan gradually made his way to northern Arizona where he’d heard of a longstanding land dispute between Navajo + Hopi tribes.  In 1984 the dispute resulted in approximately 9000 of 180,000 Navajo tribal members being  forcibly relocated from ancestral land where they were primarily sheep and cattle herders in exchange for life in prefabricated homes.  Sadly, many of the people relocated didn’t have the income to cover utilities as they’d formerly made their livelihood from their animals.  Many found themselves homeless.  However, a group of elders refused to leave their ancestral homeland and to this day continue to protest forced relocation.
Dan’s images of the land dispute generated interest in a documentary film on the subject titled “Broken Rainbow” which won an Academy Award in 1985 for best documentary.  As noted on the promo poster for the film “There is no word for relocation in the Navajo language; to relocate is to disappear and never been seen again.”
I was asked recently by curator Erin Elder to consider submitting work for a pop up show critically evaluating land use in a capitalist economy (for the Museum of Capitalism in Oakland).  She says of her portion of the show titled American Domain “…Under capitalism, land is measured, marked, bounded, guarded, and owned; it is a commodity, a site of production, and oftentimes, capitalism’s dumping ground. Though land ownership is not an inherently American phenomenon, the United States was founded on a land grab and its identity has been consistently wrapped up with the economics of territory. Through artists’ work about fences and walls, boundaries and their trespass, American Domain examines notions of property and ownership.”
Dan’s images from his time at Big Mountain immediately came to mind.  I approached him about using one of his images for an installation and found him to be excited by the idea.  Next I sought out a part time resident of Big Mountain whose mother was active in the relocation resistance.  We agreed that in light of the ongoing struggles of First Nations people to maintain sovereignty over their land this image is as timely now as it was when it was taken circa 1984 and he consented to its use.
The United States Flag Code
Title 4, Chapter 1
The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
Installing the image over a week in Oakland led to several insightful moments such as the police officer who pointed out the flag was upside down as he passed in his cruiser or the fireman who stopped his firetruck, got out and engaged me in conversation about the photo.  The most compelling interaction was with a vet who vehemently proclaimed one evening while I was on the lift that he fought for that flag and didn’t appreciate seeing it upside down.  He concluded by saying “Trump 2017!”  Two days later he returned and shared that after 8 years of combat in Afghanistan seeing things no one should ever see he now suffers from PTSD, sleeps poorly and can’t hold a job.  Things set him off easily and he has trouble controlling his emotions.  He said he’d gone into service believing in this country and it’s promise of democracy both here and abroad only to realize he’d wasted 8 years of his life and is a changed man.  He apologized for his aggressive tone 2 days earlier and cried as he recounted some of his life experiences.  I thanked him for returning and providing an opportunity for discussion.  We shook hands and embraced before he headed on his way.
man carrying items to recycling center at dawn
shaking hands with the vet                      photo by claudia escobar

photo by claudia escobar
Brooklyn Street Art article is here.
For more information on this ongoing struggle, check www.supportblackmesa.org.
jetsonorama, off the rez

blue light till dawn

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There’s a new project space that opened in Santa Fe recently called Biocultura.  They had an inaugural event April 23rd where they were one of several organizations to partner with the Smithsonian Institute to recognize Earth Day.  The event at Biocultura Santa Fe was called  Earth Optimism.  As taken from the Smithsonian website:
Earth Optimism at Biocultura Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Sunday, April 23, 2017, 5 PM – 7:30 PM MDT, 1505 Agua Fria Street
Earth Optimism Santa Fe connects globally and acts locally to feature the work of artists, students and scientists responding to environmental
challenges and opportunities. Our aim for this event is to celebrate the
systems that keep our soil (and us) healthy. Featuring electronics pioneer Leah Beuchley, LA-based bio artist Mick Lorusso in a collaboration with Joel Ong, artist and designer Catherine Page Harris, Marfa-based artist Elise Sibley Chandler, biologist Renee Bronwyn Johansen and bio art and design students Kaitlin Bryson and Sabrina Islam. The event will also mark the launch of a work by Navajo Nation-based photo muralist and memberof the Justseeds cooperative Chip Thomas. More information under “events”at our website bioculturasantafe.com.
For the mural imagery I spent time with a young Hopi man named Hawthorne Dukepoo and his sister Metzli.  They live with their siblings, maternal grandma and parents on Third Mesa on the Hopi nation.  Though only 18 Hawthorne has been farming in his grandfather’s cornfield since age 12. I think Metzli said she and her twin sister started when they were five.   They’re about 10 now.  The cornfield had gone fallow several years.  Their mom, Lilian, taught him the traditional Hopi farming technique known as dry farming.  The seeds are placed in shallow holes.  During germination the roots burrow down to the water table.
Lilian and her husband manage a permaculture institute on 2nd mesa that focuses on traditional farming techniques, cob building and water harvesting.  In a region of the state considered a food desert their efforts provide healthy alternatives to food options available at local trading posts.  They also run a weekly farmer’s market.
The photo on the side of Biocultura shows Hawthorne preparing his field for planting next month by creating rows of wind blocks using nearby brush.  Metzli is in the background preparing brush for the wind block.
The photo on the front of the house is of Hawthorne holding sweet corn and Hopi red corn.  The woman in the window of one of the images of the front of Biocultura is artist and scientist Andrea Polli who cofounded Biocultura with her partner, artist + architect John Donalds.
community, off the rez

Live + Direct from Penland School of Crafts

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Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina is one of the country’s oldest and most respected schools of craft.  Opened in 1929 by Lucy Morgan who focused her initial instruction on weaving in order to help local women build cottage industries to help support their families.  As noted on Wikipedia “…The school now offers Spring, Summer, and Fall workshops in craft disciplines, including weaving and dyeing, bead work, glassblowing, pottery, paper making, metalworking, and woodworking. It also offers fine arts subjects, such as printmaking, painting, and photography.[2][4] Workshops are taught by visiting American and international artists and professors.”

Having known of Penland since 1970 when I first visited while attending a nearby alternative, Quaker school (the Arthur Morgan School), we went there twice during my middle school years for folk and contra dancing.  It was at Penland that I learned to clog in 1971 so I was honored and thrilled when I was asked to return this spring for a 1 and a half week long residency.

My time at Penland was like an episode of Project Runway in that I had 9 days to arrive, acquaint myself with the community, photograph something or someone that represented the gestalt of the educational center, get this work printed, prepped and pasted.  It didn’t help that my first 3 days there coincided with a stomach flu presenting as explosive diarrhea, fatigue and fever.  I soldiered on.  Arriving late Sunday night I spent the first day on the down low meeting students and staff in various studios.  I started photographing on Tuesday knowing that in order to get the work printed, prepped and pasted I’d have to get the files to a printer by the following day.  After deciding upon an image to paste, I drove to a printer and hour away in Asheville.  Despite having been assured by the printing company that they could complete the job by Friday I was told when I arrived that the job required too much of their black ink and they wouldn’t be able to do it.

Hearing the voice of Project Runway mentor and spirit guide Tim Gunn I had to figure out a way to make it work.  I called the printing company in Tucson, AZ I’ve been using for the past 2 years and told them my situation.  I was assured that if I could upload the files to them by noon their time Wednesday (the day I was calling them), they’d be able to get them back to me by Friday.  I sat the office of the print company in Asheville that bailed on the job to use their wifi and uploaded the files to Reproductions, Inc.  (Let me take a moment to give this company a shout out.  They’re a small, non-corporate, employee-owned print shop with personable service who charge me 12 cents per square foot for large format, black and white, toner based prints as compared to 80 cents per square foot at companies like FedEx Office.  I love them.)

I informed the program director of my situation.  Unbeknownst to me she called Reproductions, Inc and asked them to express ship the order such that I’d receive it the following day (which i did.  I point this out only to express the irony that FedEx was able to get this order across country in a day when I’ve often ordered shipments from Reproductions, Inc the next day only to have it arrive 2 days later and I’m in the same state.)  Regardless, I got the work and the count down was on.  Because my glue doesn’t dry properly below 50 degrees and it snowed the day I placed the order, I waited until Sunday to begin pasting knowing full well I had to represent since I was in my home state.

The site I selected for the installation was a 1950s era, cottage with asbestos shingles used to store gardening equipment.  It’s called Green Acres.  And why did I chose Green Acres?  Because Green Acres is the place to be.  Farm living is the life for me.  That, and it has great visibility.  The images chosen was clay pieces waiting to be fired over 8 days in a wood kiln.  Thus, the title for the installation is “Clay Pieces Pretending to be Contestants on The Apprentice (i.e., pots waiting to be fired.)”

Green Acres

Dawn

Sunrise

Textiles student + hardcore, ready to go the distance assistant, Krysten Watson (You rule.)

Adam + Onay adding stoking the kiln to fire the pieces pretending to be contestants on “The Apprentice.”

Much love to the good people at Penland.  Thanks for the opportunity and the experience.  I hope we get to do it again.

Brooklyn Street Art coverage:  http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2017/04/17/chip-thomas-wraps-a-house-with-pots-in-penland-north-carolina/

 

climate change, climate justice, community, environment, off the rez

event horizon

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I was invited to participate in the 2017 Joshua Treenial.  The theme this year was event horizon.  I ventured to Joshua Tree in January to find a potential location for an installation and to obtain source photos.

Thanks to local resident and artist Diane Best I was able to find an abandoned house on the property of Blake Simpson.  Per Blake the house hadn’t been occupied for 10 years or more.   Upon completion of the installation Blake was moved to use the space for community art happenings.  My artist statement describes my thinking about this project.

In general relativity theory, an event horizon is a boundary in space-time beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman’s terms, it is defined as “the point of no return, the point at which gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible, even for light.”

My piece, “Inside out” focuses on an environmental point of no return.  Environmental scientists identify 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere as being the point of no return.  As stated on the website of the environmental organization 350.org:

“…Since the beginning of human civilization, our atmosphere contained about 275 ppm of carbon dioxide. That is the planet “on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Beginning in the 18th century, humans began to burn coal, gas, and oil to produce energy and goods. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere began to rise, at first slowly and now more quickly. Many of the activities we do every day like turning the lights on, cooking food, or heating our homes rely on energy sources that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. We’re taking millions of years worth of carbon, once stored beneath the earth as fossil fuels, and releasing it into the atmosphere.

Right now we’re at over 400 ppm, and we’re adding 2 ppm of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. Unless we are able to rapidly turn that around and return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk triggering tipping points and irreversible impacts that could send climate change spinning truly beyond our control.”

Wildlife biologists predict that at the current rate of temperature rise, 1/3 of all animal species are at risk of extinction by 2050 unless CO2 emissions are reduced by 30%.  For this reason, stark imagery from the Salton Sea was used to dramatize the urgency with which we need to act to limit CO2 emissions and subsequent temperature and ocean level increases.

“It would take about 30 feet of sea level rise to connect the Salton Sink to the ocean and permanently fill it again. Realistically, climatologists expect at most 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) of sea level rise by 2100. Without significant reductions to our carbon emissions and/or physical intervention to block sea level rise, the Salton Sink (as well as all of the area reaching from Imperial Valley to the Sea of Cortez) will eventually be permanently under water. (https://saltonseasense.com/2016/01/14/the-other-changing-sea-level/#more-1166)”

Our pattern of carbon based energy exploitation and consumption has turned our planet upside down and inside out.  The Hopi have a word for this called “koyaanisqatsi” which means crazy life or life out of balance.

The time to act is now.

Images by Diane Best are below:

Images by Gabrielle Houeix are below:

My artist statement was included in the structure with the hopes of raising awareness and prompting people to action.

Video of the dancing joshua tree: https://vimeo.com/212393820

Brooklyn Street Art blog coverage of the Joshua Tree installation is here.

 

jetsonorama, justseeds, off the rez

justseeds x the young new yorkers

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young new yorkers wall 2015

 

The prints that Justseeds donated on view at the Young New Yorkers Benefit show at Joseph Gross Gallery in NYC last night (April !, 20!5). Young New Yorkers is a restorative arts justice program for incarcerated youth in New York State. Read more about Young New Yorkers & the amazing work they do here:www.youngnewyorkers.com

From left to right: Grafica Mazatl, Chip Thomas, Pete Railand, Melanie Cervantes, Jess X. Chen, Thea Gahr, Roger Peet, Molly Fair.

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