Wrapping up my days here at my second artist residency in Terlingua, Texas. Years back, I had the pleasure of visiting this landscape with my partner at the time, and I recall falling in love with the landscape then. The heat, not so much but there is something so beautiful about summer eve in the quietude of the evening, when the starlight is twinkling and dancing at you like sirens in water. The beginning of June, I began reconnecting with the night and my relationship, during the warm months, has continued.
After settling into the gorgeous casita, framed with concrete and reflecting the grey strata found out in the land with a minimalistic design, I set too on my project. With all of the monsoon weather New Mexico has been benefiting from, and more importantly, the magic I find within the season, I wanted to convey something simplistic as a calling down of the rain & lightning. So, in an unusual fashion, I minimally packed 2 cotton yarns in turquoise & black. I began to weave the imprint lightning strikes have had in my sight the last month solid, empowering myself in my meditative practice to embrace that which I can also fear. When a lightning strike happens nearby, everything whites out. I’ve been in two of these so far: One took place the first summer I relocated to New Mexico after carrying groceries inside and the thunder just about inhaled every atom of me into it’s tumultuous roar meanwhile an eerie grey dappled with yellow seeped out my side eye sight. The second was a complete white out on a patio, 360 degrees around, while meeting my two dear friends for the first time at Bishops Lodge. It was electrifying and equally, terrifying. Since then, I have found myself both entranced and often paranoid by it’s presence. It’s like life, artistic life.. There are moments I am still afraid of the unknown future with this career and upon others, I feel like Captain Dan yelling at the helm of the ship in the middle of a hurricane beckoning for it all to come get me. Forest Gump reference for anyone reading. So, I figured I’d focus on this simple two toned work in my classic lightning pattern to be transformed into a Stevie Cape.
The heat sweltered by day, the starlight christened my experience here by night all along encountering the warmest of creatives here in process with me. Everyone clung to their casitas by day and we all ran into one another in the evenings or whenever the pangs of hunger called us to the main house. Having the opportunity to share space, be in my own space, reflect, listen, share has been exactly what I hoped for. I often miss the creative conversations of individuals pursuing their dreams through their hands in Santa Fe, and I can’t quite tell you why there isn’t enough of that. Perhaps everyone who is an actual artist pursuing a professional career is hustling the way I am, perhaps there are too many hermits healing. Whatever the reason be, the chance to be spread out, dreaming, exploring, painting, drawing, writing, shooting, weaving, sculpting has been the perfect fill me up before I head home.
I had the chance to connect and play shoot with Meredith Williams & Mackenzie Jones, both young creatives from Austin. Finally, a pathway to connecting with more like minds and playful spirits in Texas has taken shape. I’ve been desiring to expand and share more of the work in Texas so here it is. In short, I felt the creating of this work, titled “ Turquoise Lightning Bearing Down Upon the Land” reflects an offering to the Celestial Beings up above, an honoring of all that befalls during the monsoon time as the land waits to be quenched. Lightning reflects electricity, the radiance we find within ourselves and from around us as we open ourselves up to receive; Lightning is also that opportunity to confront the fears we face in our impermanence of all things in life, building our courage as we walk to the inevitable land of death and beyond.
This residency has proven to be just what I wanted, and needed. My mind is refreshed with new perspectives, my nose is tinted with the scent of Creosote, I’m holding a few new ideas for exploring natural dyes a bit more but on paper, and I’m itching to learn more about the history of Texas.
