A journey into the American West: Cibola

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.

Wednesday 30 September 2009

Cibola - El Mal Pais

The next stop was Cibola, a high desert site which was literally below freezing at night and hot enough to burn during the day. We spent several nights on this site. The first couple of days we went hiking around. The place used to be inhabited by indiginous tribes from the 9th - 12th century. The common practice was to make pottery and discard it around the site. Amazing the hillsides are still littered with these beautiful pot shards. It was like walking around the most amazing museum, to be able to pick these things up and feel them and see them and touch them, and leave them behind for the next group of lucky explorers. We also found bits of old tools and arrow heads in the area. And lots of pictographs and pectroglyphs - pretty AWESOME.

I loved my camping spot here in Cibola. I decided to camp a way a way from the group. It was a full moon rising whilst we were there and at night, my little spot on the hillock was bathed in glorious moonlight.