A journey into the American West: Chaco Canyon

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 28 September 2009

Chaco Canyon

The first stop off point on the second trip was Chaco Canyon, an ancient anasasi indian site believed to be a mecca for spiritual worship. A potent and powerful place, there was definitely a strange energy in the air. We spent the day with Anna Sofaer of the Solstice Project who made major findings on the site in the late 1970s and has been committed to researching the site ever since - see the link to the solstic project on the links section.