Earthworks Road Trip Through the Binoculars

The theme that keeps on giving...

Two versions of the Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd's Concrete Sculptures (so blurry it hurts)

Marfa Lights Observation Building at Sunset (these are the only Marfa Lights we saw and they were photographed from a telescope)

Imagine Walter De Maria's Lightning Field at sunset here.

Very Large Array, Socorro, New Mexico

South Kaibob Trail, South Rim of the Grand Canyon

Wupatki National Monument, Arizona

Michael Heizer's Double Negative with and without scale reference.

Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels (ideal for the format)

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty

William Benton's "Birds"

In the summer, I read poetry (or try to ... one poem a day). The moment I laid my hands on Birds in the Marfa Book Company, I knew it was mine. It is a handheld gem that will inspire me to be more clever with my typewriter, force me to focus on the form of the word, and remember everything I learned in graduate school about placing text on a page.

I   w   k       u        o    e      m    r    i    g     &     m      h   n   s      w    r       o     d.
      o    e       p        n             o   n   n                    y      a    d          e    e        l

Marfa: We Meet Again

After the Amarillo Ramp was rained out, I searched for a ramp of any form the rest of the trip. Here is the first located in front of the old Marfa Wool and Mohair Building. I was not satisfied as it featured more staircase than incline (the sun wasn't helping with the exposure).

The Marfa Book Company moved into a temporary location in the Lumberyard until the new hotel is completed. In the meantime, everyone was overwhelmed with its contents (including Lexi Musselman above).

In addition to buying a book of poetry on birds and a few Sam Schonzeit postcards, I added a number of publications to my wish list including The Importance of Being Iceland.

Mediterranean food via the Marfa Food Shark was still excellent. Several photographs were had of the table and its perfectly placed napkin holder.

This is what Donald Judd's pool at the Block looked like this year (with Noelle looking at a dead bat in the background). Not so enticing.

A highlight of this trip was staying at El Cosmico. I shared a teepee with my colleague, Lara. By the sheer number of photographs that I took of this location, one would think I had never seen or slept in one before.

The interior of the teepee in the morning.

The teepee fire pit and fake fur rugs.

A shocking (for Jacinda) photo of a sunrise from (you guessed it) the entrance of the teepee.

... shortly followed by the hammock groves. Bucolic.

For the sixth Marfa visit, I would like to stay in one of the trailers perhaps one like the above.

I was on autopilot for much of Marfa (the Chinati and Judd Foundation tours in particular), searching for something new to experience that I hadn't seen in 2013.

The closest I came was the moment that I saw a plant growing in the Flavin sculpture at Chinati, though the horned owl nesting on the side of the Artillery Shed was also a surprise.

Personal History Tour of Marfa with Sam Schonzeit

While visiting the Marfa Book Company, I encountered Sam Schonzeit's exhibition Art Fair. He was living in the gallery for the month of July, huddled behind a laptop in the corner. His actions resembled a gallerino more so than the artist.

It wasn't until exiting, that I took the time to read all the notes on the walls and discovered that he was giving Personal History Tours of Marfa for $25. Intrigued, I walked back into the gallery and asked what this entailed. 

On the previous tour, Sam took his party to all the places he lived in Marfa (I think it was seven) - some of which they could enter and others they could not.

We arranged a time - the next day at 2 PM. I was excited as this was the first piece of performance art that I had ever purchased, a great opportunity to see a new side of Marfa and meet a new artist.

We met at the Marfa Book Company Gallery and he took on the role of chauffeur. I sat in the back seat of his car as he stressed that "this position was important" in the role of tour guide.

First stop: Pueblo Market to pick up the last week's batch of posters for his exhibition but they had already thrown them away. This was his way of showing the artist's process. He bought me a beverage after making a recommendation: Bob Marley Mellow Mood (green tea with honey, decaffeinated with valerian root). I went with water because it was the desert and an immediate thirst quencher.

He drove seven miles on Highway 67 - his normal bike route. I learned about Sam's job and his relationship with his boss.  Sam is an expert ping pong player who took lessons from his father, a photo realist painter who gouged his eye out when he was five years old. He is 71 and likes to talk about his own artwork a lot though he is generally supportive and buys Sam tools.

We drove around the cemetery and ended up at Sam’s house which is dominated by wood paneling. He has lived there since May and is finally going to paint it. He said he wanted to "put it all out there" and showed every room in his house with informative comments like “That is not a sex toy but a foot massager.” “This is broken yoga tool.” 

The best part were the examples of his recent postcard collaboration (more on that later) and a peek in his garage studio where he spray paints his postcards. He is venturing into non toxic methods though so that may be a medium of the past. 

I learned that he is allergic to cats though he likes them. He has an Architecture degree at UT. He left Soho in 2002 (he grew up across the street from Donald Judd's Spring Street house). He has lived in Marfa for four years and is a little tired of not making a living here.

He drove along a "nice walk he usually takes to see the sunset." We ended the hour long tour at the courthouse cupola where he witnessed a wedding with seven people (he proceeded to open up the windows because it was hot - a kind gesture considering it was a public location).

Back at the gallery, Sam printed an invoice. This was the best spur of the moment art purchase I've ever made. As the role of the tourist, I felt compelled to ask him personal questions in addition to general ones about what it was like living in Marfa. Sometimes that surprised me as I do not generally probe strangers to the degree that I did Sam. The whole event reaffirmed the fact that someone else's personal experience can be fascinating - the package/presentation is a large component of its success.  It gave me a whole new perspective on Marfa, the art making practice, and introduced me to the work of a new contemporary artist whose work I've come to admire.

Thunderbird Hotel Swimming Pool

Stats:
• Shallow End = 4'
• Deep End = 9'
• a black line divides the center at the 6' mark
• the edges are scalloped and on the shallow side, two sets of curved stairs with three steps each descend into the pool
• there is a ledge on the deep side - a perfect place to stand in knee deep water and pseudo dive or sit while debating whether or not to jump back in or get out

 

The sides of the pool and the bottom have brown striations similar to the marks found on a Richard Serra sculpture made of Cor-ten steel. There were water skippers on the shallow end and red dragonflies hovering but not dipping into the water. Reflections of the ocotillo branch fence and white and orange faded lawn chairs appeared depending on the presence of the sun and the position of the clouds.

Pink haunts this pool. Here a deflated raft drifts into the composition.  Everything is greener than I remember, the color constantly changing in direct and diffused light. I kept trying to name the hue and sea green was the closest I came.

I am learning how to use a zoom mic and recorded the sounds - magnificent glugs with roofers stapling tile in the background. I missed the bells from the Catholic church. At this stage, I am collecting without intentions of using the files but who knows what will happen in the future?

I made a list of thirteen bodies of water that have influenced who I am (twelve of which I've visited and one that I dream of seeing eventually). The Thunderbird Hotel swimming pool is meaningful from an artistic end. I made a photograph of a floating doughnut that turned into a series of fake cakes that transformed my process. Not only is it an emerald jewel in the West Texas desert, but a location of great artistic inspiration.

Clear Water Sample: Donald Judd's "Tank"

Here I am, collecting water from dead artist's swimming pools. No need to answer what that means (because I don't know yet either).

Donald Judd's pool is officially called a "tank." It does not have a filtration system nor can it be drained (in other words... yuck).  This evening, I pulled out my Chinati manual and this is what Judd wrote about it in the Selected Texts section:

After Nate and Marni sent me a mason jar full of water from Robert Rauschenberg's pool earlier this summer, it was fitting to do the same in Marfa.

A thunderstorm storm, fortunately, forced everyone on the tour to stand under the arbor not in the rain, so it wasn't difficult to pull the jar out of my bag and slide it into the water on the 8' side.

 I couldn't fly back with it in my luggage so a trip to the Alpine post office was in order. Luckily, the water sample arrived without breaking and now I have two large containers to contend with.

Judd Foundation Block Tour (Belated Post)

This was my second trip on the Judd Foundation's Block Tour (featuring his living quarters, library and "studios" which resembled galleries). There were many differences from the past visit, primarily the weather. It was rainy and cool and the buildings were not faint inducing hot as they were previously.

This time I counted all of Judd's beds and the other dominant feature that I began to look for was his use of orange and cadmium.

Our tour guide, the estimable Eugene Binder, allowed us into the library where seven us stood in the doorway looking at the books curl in the heat and gradually yellow with age. One of my favorites was a college algebra book that was so warped it couldn't stand on it's own. The books displayed on the main table (focusing on architecture and the pyramids of Mexico) were placed in the same position Judd left them in November 1993. In between the book piles was a hat, carabiners, stones, and brushes (to sweep away the dust?). Rocks were commonly featured on the shelves both as display and functional book ends.

[Image via]

Judd undoubtedly had the best prosciutto cutting set in Marfa in full view in his kitchen. The ten person dining table, at the right angle, allowed one to see wax spilled on the wood from twenty years earlier. Three armored knights (2/3rds size) were suspended from the stairway, watching over those that dined with Judd and his family.

I continually marvel at the limited storage space in Judd's buildings. Everything is in sight. Kitchen utensils, bowls, plates, etc. are in full view. Arrowhead collections reside on tables within the living space. He was a minimalist that likes clutter (though it's neatly arranged). I would grow weary of this and want to clear off spaces for breathing room.

The Southwest Studio featured a lot of cadmium and Swimming Pool in the back right [Image via]

It was not difficult to imagine Judd's day-to-day existence, moving from one space to the next, arranging a pile here, taking a nap on a bed there. He had so many of these rooms and in today's age of leaving a smaller environmental footprint, it felt wasteful.

A dominant theme of the artwork in the studios was the presentation of sculptures that Judd did not want in public view. I love the idea of Judd living with the problematic works, not well conceived ones. I wonder what my walls would look like if I hung all the art that was unresolved and how that would change my working process (?).

Summer 2013 Postcard Collective Submission: "Exchange"

This is an ode to all the postcards I have received over the past two years that make me dream of summer. The "exchange" portion of the theme is dual fold. Perhaps the viewer will read the reflection of the clouds as a substitute for water. My intention was an exchange of place, an effort to encapsulate that swimming pool in a specimen bottle 1405 miles away. The paper that the clear water sample rests on was soaked in the chlorinated pool, hence the wrinkled surface.

I am so enamored with this image (and still searching for any reason why it should be included in the Clear Water Sample series) that I printed it larger than any digital photograph I have ever made (40" x 60" with the postcard for scale on the bottom left):

Amelia pointed out the other day that it is a very rare photograph for me due to the fact that it is not manipulated or set up in any form. Hm...