last year i spent some time in the high desert of west texas. being such a water person, never in a million years would i have imagined that i'd fall in so deeply in love with the desert, or feel so completely and utterly at home there. it was the strangest thing...being in the desert was like being in one of those dreams where you're standing at the bottom of the ocean...you're floating in the peaceful, infinite abyss...but you can breathe...
ever since, i've been yearning to go back, feeling inspired by an urgency to make work that expresses this sensation, bringing the desert and the ocean together. so when i learned about andrea zittel's high desert test sites in the high desert of joshua tree california, i jumped at the chance to apply. i proposed to construct a piece of buckminster fuller-inspired quasi oceanographic-desert research equipment especially for the spot. at the same time, i noticed a call-to-artists for a film festival happening the same weekend in joshua tree. so i applied for that too, with a plan to show the jellyfish movie i shot in acadia park in maine two summers ago. i wanted more than anything to see these jellyfish swimming in the desert, against the black starlit sky (like a phosphorescent sea...). well, the sculpture was rejected, the film accepted. and then, by a serendipitous turn of events, quinn, curator of orion's shorts, the film festival, and i became pals via email, and now it looks like i'll be putting some sculpture in another show she's having. i don't think it'll be the research equipment thing, though...thinkin' strings of tell-tail thangkas, and piles of ice-cream cone buckyballs...
the upshot of all this is it looks like i'll be making a road-trip out west at the end of the month, back to the desert. and i couldn't be more thrilled.
