Santa FE Art Institute Studies

2018

These collage pieces are studies for this larger installation work: a moveable transparent wall. Using mainly collected and found items in an Arte Povera approach, I’ve combined parachute cord, knots (the developed piece will use knots with more tension, in an overall pattern integrated with the net); also tulle, organza, bubble wrap, plastic produce bags, and bottles with text from research, historical facts, newspapers and things I’ve been told in conversation. This approach will comprise a part of what we use in this collaborative installation The text will likely become stories given and told by participants on their experience of borders, boundaries and walls.

New Mexico Turquoise (2018) 4’4” w x 3’9” (not including rope)

Organza, parachute cord, printed images, text and newspaper article.

Note: New Mexico is has a highly complex and multi-layered social and political history which this piece addresses. The knots reference the system used by Native leader Po’pay to organize the Pueblos into the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, to drive out the Spaniards. There are also whites claiming to be descendents of the conquistadores, Mexicans who have been land owners for many generations, new comers who are undocumented from Mexico, white people and police. New Mexico also has been used as a nuclear testing ground for years, Los Alamos being the site of the secretive “Manhattan Project”, and the primary funds come into the state coffers from gas and oil and fracking on ancient sacred sites. I was told by a local New Mexican artist that “no one trusts anyone else here”.