Late winter days in the West are wonderful when the snow has melted (even though we all know we’ll get spring snows) and the sun shines brightly. I find the light ochre color of the prairie grasses to be calming and peaceful as the warmth of the sun infuses the surroundings and my winter-chilled body.
Rusted and abandoned objects dot the vast landscape in the west. They harbor stories of the people who used them, and for whatever reason, left them in situ.
As with all my objects, I didn’t abandon these, but packed them up and took them with me so as to leave little trace of their presence at this site.
The series of three images just posted were taken on the shore of Lake Michigan, not far from Navy Pier in Chicago. My husband was attending a conference there and I tagged along.
It was a stormy day, the wind was howling and it was raining intermittently. Standing was a challenge, as was holding my camera still. At first I was disappointed that these shots turned out so out of focus, but the more I lived with them, the more pleased I was. They reflect the feeling of the day so much better than if they had been sharp.
They foreshadowed an upcoming storm in my life: three weeks after this trip I had surgery to remove a large tumor that revealed I had ovarian cancer. Three weeks after that surgery I had another (surprise!) surgery to drain fluid from around my heart and to test it to see if the cancer had spread. Thankfully it had not, and my diagnosis was stage 1, quite a lucky break since ovarian cancer is most often found at a later stage.
Nearly a year later, I’ve gone through chemotherapy and am returning to normal, but not nearly as fast as I’d like! I have no evidence of disease. It’s now a mental game to not let dark thoughts creep in, and most the time I do pretty well since I tend to be an optimistic person by nature. Every day is a gift and to be lived to the fullest and enjoyed!
Wyoming is a state full of fossils and geological history. It is not hard to be out in the middle of nowhere and feel as though you’ve stepped back a few million years.
The murky water in this image always conjures up primordial ooze in my imagination, and I faintly hear the thundering steps of a dinosaur in the distance.
In the West we are almost always dealing with drought. That’s just part of the territory of living in an arid environment where water is scarce. Images of cracked, dried-out soil are entrenched in my memory from the ’70s when dust storms roared down the street in Southeastern Colorado when I was a kid.
While this installation is in Wyoming, the cracked soil is familiar from those early memories. The jagged lines have always fascinated me, and I’m thrilled that I finally incorporated them into my work.
Growing up and living in the rural west means you see a lot of abandoned buildings – old houses, schools, barns, etc. Many of them are falling down, and over the course of years you see the advancement of time as the vegetation takes over and the building slumps more and more.
This installation took place while on a road trip across Wyoming to an arts conference with a couple of my art peeps, Do and Mitch. We made lots of stops along the way and had great discussions about art. They and my other art friends challenge me, encourage me and keep me from feeling abandoned in the middle of nowhere as an artist.
art in the middle of nowhere 