Owens River

This is a picture I took of my dog (Pippi) several years ago, maybe 2010.  My mom and I were driving to the Sierras and stopped on the side of Hwy 395 somewhere along the Owens River to look for come petroglyphs that a more desert savvy friend (Gary Gray) had shown her once.  We never found the petroglyphs, but we did almost lose our dog in the Owens River. Along the river we found a sign (one of many) that said “Owens River: Property of LA county.”  In the margins, someone had written the words “Fuck LA and the horse it rode in on”.  Amen.

Dogs:  What I like about this picture is how much of a common yellow cur my dog looks… she was a mutt in the true sense of the word and would probably do okay on her own. Even so, Pippi was part of our family, and in this picture is probably feeling torn between following us (as we scramble around in the rocks) and staying with the car so she knows she will not be left behind.  While we don’t usually think twice about it, I think it is actually rather extraordinary that the animal in this picture is so attached to our vehicle.  Considering how evolutionarily divergent canines and humans are, she really shouldn’t have a place in her brain for recognition of such a human based object, much less anxiety surrounding her personal dependence on it.

Foxes (courtesy of Nat Geo)

Yellowstone Fires

I took these pictures while driving through Yellowstone National Park with my mom in summer of 2013.  It was a vaguely apocalyptic drive, with most of the turnoffs and trails blocked to encourage tourists to stay on the road.  The lighting was difficult to capture, which is a shame because it was a rare combination of eery and gorgeous.  Like most people my mom hates fire and with good reason, she has lived in the mountains of Southern California for at least a decade.

Fire:  Evolutionarily, we are programmed to avoid fire.  While it is not in our personal best interest to put them out, a population of thrill-seeking, somewhat selfless individuals fight fires for a living.  Burning cities are obviously not ideal, but at the same time any ecologist will tell you that our current fire regime is as illogical as it is irresponsible.  Our mantra of early containment is extremely costly, and all it does is leave the fuel to burn hotter and more out of control in the future. The fires in California are more frequent and more expansive with each passing year of climate change, and yet Smoky the Bear still stands along every major mountain highway.  Against our better judgement, we are letting ourselves become victims of an ecological trap, bringing us nearer to a real fire apocalypse in all dry, vegetated climates.  Ecological traps occur more often with other species, but the ones that are particularly global/longitudinal still manage to haunt us, hence the environmental movement. tsk tsk.

Henry Darger

Henry Darger is one of the most incredible “Outside Artists” of the 20th century-  he is the author of a 15,145 page typewritten manuscript about the rebellion of the Vivian Girls, who fight to free a race of children enslaved by the Glandelinians.  The story parallels the Civil War and has two endings, one in which the Vivian Girls successfully free the children and the other in which the Glandelinians are successful.  The book is titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion  and details each battle of the war including the officers involved and those who perished.  The work is accompanied by over 300 illustrations, many of which are double sided and measure up to 12 feet long.  All of this was only discovered in his apartment after his death, where he lived alone as a janitor in Chicago.  I took these images from the American Folk Museum website, and got some of this information from the documentary, In the realms of the unreal.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy is a remarkable human-  He apparently leaves his home in the morning (I think he lives in England?) with just a lunch pail.  After picking a location he settles down and builds something out of leaves or whatever is lying around.  He uses saliva as adhesive, sharp stones or teeth as scissors, gravity, tension, and patience.  I was unsure how some of these were titled, I guess he only titles them if they are published in a book or exhibited in a gallery.  He also keeps a diary and writes about the process and conditions of his work… here is an entry for the hazel sticks in the water, taken from his digital catalogue:

Dead hazel sticks
bent over
stuck into bottom of shallow pond
waited for froth and mud to clear
had to go back into water several times to bend a stick that had sprung up
then had to wait all over again for water to clear
very calm
took a long time for froth to float away
overcast and humid
Bentham, Yorkshire
September 1980

Vija Celmins

Cai Guo-Qiang

I saw these pieces at the Guggenheim in NYC, it was the best exhibition I’ve seen in person.  He has a truly extraordinary website … http://caiguoqiang.com/

Cat Skeleton

“I have wanted to paint the desert, and I haven’t known how. I always think that I can not stay with it long enough. So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbol of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I now. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around – hair, eyes, and all their tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive in the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable – and knows no kindness with all its beauty” – Georgia O’keeffe