Far West Texas, 2013

In preparation for my trip down to NC in a couple weeks, I thought I'd share some photographs from the second-to-last big trip I took (the most recent being my relocation from TX to NY with just me, a cat, a bag of Barnana, and all my belongings in the car).

In July 2013, my good friend B and I headed out in the FJ with some good desert outfits, a pair or two of crazy tall heels (just in case), and loads of chia seeds, fiber crackers and bananas.

Our goal was to hit Marfa and surrounding areas, pass through some border towns, see a star show, see Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, check out the Prada Marfa store, exist in the desert, and leave time to explore/look at rocks.

A Texas town we stopped in early on

Explorer B

Our first night, we slept in an average old motel with two beds. We were near a large town.

My travel belongings laid out on my side of the room

We moved westward....

Somewhere in the mountains...

We spent a night at a "tourist's/motorist's camp," whose rooms were basically open-air stalls crammed with two twin beds. It was cheap, and breezy, and clean. The town, whose name escapes me, was quite strange.

They had a wonderful little pool with fountains

More legs; spent a lot of time lying down, recouping energy

We headed up an unpaved mountain path to get to the Chinati hot springs just out of Marfa proper. Below is the spring-fed cold pool where I learned to swim for the first time.

The first place I swam without fear; the first place I showed my breasts to the moon

Having failed to obtain fresh groceries before setting up the mountain, we improvised with some dry goods and spices we found in the communal kitchen, plus a questionable beverage made from Crystal Lite concentrate + Bragg's apple cider vinegar in water.

Dinner for two

We had a little cabin a few feet from the hot spring. It was filled with carved wooden trinkets and tiny furniture.

Heading down the next day, we passed through a ghost town called Ruidosa. We stopped a while; ruins filled with tires and HOT sun.

Ex-church, we thought.

My good girl in blue.

On one lovely night, B coordinated for us to visit a star party at the McDonald Observatory, which boasts the highest-elevation public-access road in the country. When night fell, we were allowed to look through various telescopes at planets and star clusters.

Observatory in the distance

We spent a night in Marfa at the El Cosmico "tent hotel" (they have trailers, too!). It had gotten unbearably hot for me. When it cooled down at night, I bundled up in woollen blankets and laid in a hammock under the stars.

B luxuriating in our fancy-deluxe tent

We ate a taco that, for some reason, contained grits.

We drove down a broad, empty highway to visit the Prada Marfa installation. We took our clothes off because nobody except distant truckers could see. The sun felt good.

We passed an air base fencing in a massive, unidentifiable floating white object. Even though no one was about, we didn't dare step through the gate.

Finally, the death toll on my FJ's bullguard, including one pretty (dead) ladybug.

Stall, rest, heal

Late April and May have been physically challenging to say the least. Whirlwind of pain, medications, confusion, illness, lethargy, maybe even a spot of existential panic.

I've not been in studio often, and when I am, I am more drawn to looking at very old pieces of past projects, or raw components for making larger things, than I am to creating a new project.

Handmade sheet glass from pre-2010, filled with air pockets and imperfections.

With family on my mind, I came in one day, delirious & discouraged, and created a portrait for each of us. I never did like how they turned out, but I preserve them as-is, as a testament to how I felt about my kin, that afternoon, that week, that year.

Left & middle undecided which is Mother and which is Child; right is Father. To the right a small grease marker sketch.

Detail of Mother?, flat black gouache and Phano grease marker.

Detail of Father, poured gouache and MSG solution, scratched with patterning.

Personal challenges abound this month, and yet symbolic objects, tiny projects, omen-like scribbles continue to emerge from my shop, egging me on, making me make.

Disruptions

I've been beading therapeutically for some years (in 2014 with a growing inkling to turn the pieces into a wearable collection), but sometimes even now it stops being a 'project' or a 'business' and goes back to being therapy, time-filler, time-waster, something to keep the hands busy.

On Saturday, I returned to the studio after a week and a half away, sick and adjusting to some new medication, handling (not with aplomb) family matters, meeting with new doctors, suffering a small injury, and so on––

sitting at my desk I was unsure what to do. Saturday afternoon. The sun not throwing itself aggressively down my skylight but the sky was unobtrusively and very prettily blue. It was not precisely a block, the way they call it, but rather that everything was precisely where I had left it, untouched, but I felt a million miles away and at the time it seemed unclear if I was 'allowed' to touch. This will or will not make sense to you.

It was a transient feeling but one that occasionally comes and goes when you break the regularity of studio practice. Introducing new habits can also disrupt the creative process. Medication, meditation, psychotherapy, hard running on the piers, an injury, these can all bring me to another plane of being/thinking too far from baseline to recall how to 'make like I used to'––sometimes the plane is six inches off of reality, sometimes it is out in the cosmos.

Cat's first day in the shop.

I finally made a small painting––oily, scratchy, with wet spots, like a little dog needing a bath––and it was a picture of what I felt my mind was capable of that day––and while I waited for it to dry I sat in the sunlight and beaded.

I haven't had a manicure since my friend bought me one in 2006.

It was a few hours after I'd driven in to Brooklyn that I drove out of Brooklyn, and I'd made some sort of nonsense necklace, but my hands felt worked and I thought things were returning to normalcy, somewhat.

Cupped sequins and smoky hexagonal quartz.

LEGO Digital Designer as after-work balm

I hurt myself at the gym and am feeling the stress from keeping so many balls in the air at once. My solution is generally either a shower or LEGO. Since my blocks are mostly in storage, I looked into downloading LEGO Digital Designer, LEGO's official virtual tool, and Bricksmith, a less-polished but more useful independent program with an extensive library of pieces. The latter will feel familiar if you've ever used Google's Sketchup or any other bare-bones 3D software.

Building the base for a pastel looky-loo using transparent blocks and of those WONDERFUL eyeball-printed blocks. They come in angry and non-angry varieties.

Turtle garden.

If I can't run my hands through a box of LEGO in person, I'll happily settle for this instead. It takes me an hour just to place one brick but I'm practicing putting up walls efficiently using the Clone tool. I'd like to build a temple or a mausoleum.