A journey into the American West: Safe Arrival!

A synopsis by way of explanation before you start to read...

Hi, I'm Lucy. I started my blog July 2009, to document my journey across the American West, and it now forms an archive of the Land Arts of The American West program 2009. As you can read below the journey took me far and wide with wonderful people, seeing wonderful places. When we returned from travelling we had 3 crazy weeks to put a show together. In that time I printed many photos and did 2 installations "off-site" i.e. away from the gallery space. One in an abandoned phone booth and one under a stairwell, both in different spaces within the University of New Mexico (UNM) campus. The tumble weed and barbed wire piece evolved further when I met The Chuppers - an electronic arts ensemble based in a wonderful recording studio filled with weird and wonderful hybrid instruments forged together from old and new technology. The Chuppers saw my piece under the stairs and were inspired to create music and video projection with my piece which I then in turn decided to "perform" for an audience. Around 40 or so people joined us on the night of the 18th Novemeber our audio, visual and corporeal performance...all of which is documented in my blog. This Blog has formed part of the Land Arts 2009 show at John Sommers Gallery, UNM.

Monday, 17 August 2009

Safe Arrival!

Great journey across, the last part of the trip was in a small plane. I awoke from a deep sleep to see the Sandia Mountains approaching, rising up out of the plain, the tail end of the Rockies the guy next to me told me. Sandia means water melon in Spanish, so called because they glow pinky orange in the evening sun. Chris and Kenza, my hosts from the International Student welcoming organisation are a lovely couple, they met me at the airport and took me to their home. They have a puppy who keeps licking my toes. Apparently in the back yard there are black widow spiders, Chris offered to find one and show me, I declined. Kenza is Moroccan, she and Chris met when they were both studying in Spain. Tonights supper was a delicious Gazpacho soup made with Olive Oil from Kenza's father's farm in Morocco. I'm nicely tired, it's 8.30pm which is 7 hours behind UK so its 3.30am UK time. Chris and Kenza have headed out to the supermarket and I am heading to bed...