durango was great. both tex and i presented slides of our work to the colorado arts ranch crowd and were passed a napkin telling us that we were at THE table of talent. well worth it, even if it did take a stop in the saloon before getting up to present. over all i loved durango, its a bike friendly town with a nice cold river that ran right next to where we installed the piece. beautiful. i made use of the trail at least once a day - usually many, many times.
durango had a great balance of feeling big enough that it wasn’t boring and not so big that most of the places we talked to cared about us putting our icee-packs in their freezers. we didn’t have a place to stay lined up, but it ended up being more fun like that - i got to know the soundtrack of the common sense cafe very well. we had several adventures in durango, with some very cool people…and amazing hot wings….kristen thanks for your tour guide services and special thanks to amelia and keli for the air mattress - you girls are beyond wonderful.
now we have left colorado…. but not the mountains…they keep going! we spent a couple days in new mexico - it was fun. we ran into a couple of new yorkers - mel and dan - at the royal gorge. a ride into town, a few margaritas and a dip in the pool later and we had a hotel room for the night with our new friends.
we ended up all heading to oja caliente the next day; mineral pools - iron, soda, arsenic and a mud bathe. i got in touch with my inner ceramicist, and it felt amazing….
with baby soft skin, we all continued though santa fe, and ended in albuquerque where our new friends flew back to new york and we began looking for desert. the weather was there, cold nights with hot days, but the land scape was too green. we collected a few larger pipes - for a piece that might not happen, the zia, its on the new mexico flag - which doesn’t really work anymore since we ended up speeding though new mexico, due to it not looking quite as desert-y as one might think, and we now we are in arizona, flagstaff to be exact, which is more desert-y, finally…
we are here, finally. surrounded by glorious mountains with crisp mornings that warm up to perfect days that cool back down to crisp mornings….. we stayed in denver; spent a few days on bikes, reacclimating ourselves to a city and being around so many people…and starbucks. after that we went down to colorado springs to see garden of the gods. we took a little bike ride. we were contemplating hitching a ride back to our car about half way through, but no trucks came by so we eventually worked our way back. two kids from the mid-west should really be reminded when going on a bike ride in colorado that they’re in the mountains!
ended up camping in a beautiful national forest close to the center of colorado. woke up early, because the sun wont let you sleep-in too much and headed on our way. since we had been camping for a few days and we were close to bueno vista - which we were told had hot springs - we decided to make a stop. shower, swimming, relaxation, oh hot springs…
after we had dried off, and abused our internet access for a while, we continued to durango. by means of crawling - like an alligator, rarrh - up the mountains at an average speed of 12 miles per hour, and down the mountains at around five times that fast, pressing the breaks the whole time. i was told a few times that i should go back to reading and stop “helping” drive. once we reached durango we quickly found our campsite - the super wal-mart parking lot. since we left kansas city, we have done this a few times but this was the first encounter where it was busy! there were lots of people camping there, it was almost hard to find a spot. Again we awoke with the sun, to begin our days here in durango…
The Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska yielded many good things. Dominique made a quilt in the first day, and I managed to squeeze two installations into a week.
Here are a few images, click to go to their respective galleries. I made a circle for Ayako, and a gemstone for the rest of the world. The gemstone marks a little bit of a new direction for us, mixing in a little Andy Goldsworthy sunflower petals to create a glow around the gemstone. Andy Goldsworthy, however, wouldn’t have gone to the flower shop in a desperate attempt to squeeze some more color into the installation, nor would he have brought a foreign man-made material into the environment for a sculpture like this.
I’m beginning to have a theory. We drove through the geographic center of continental United States and it is stunning. Located at the center of northern Kansas, you might assumed its flat. Far from it. The Geographic Center of America is marked by hills that gradually rise and abruptly descend, with a few that look like grassy tidal waves, one in particular. It’s beautiful, and so is the Geographic Center of Colorado.
Google Maps failed me for the first time, once out of two hundred or so uses isn’t bad; and in the end it was still Google maps that lead me to the geographic center, as no other map has any of the streets marked so well out in the countryside. It was Google’s satellite view that confirmed that the center is right smack in the middle of someone’s private property, which is a stunning hunk of land, to say the least. We nervously drove up the hill which was kind of marked “NO TRESPASSING” but we felt that our cause was worthy. We made a note for the owners of the Summer home, which in some ways is better than surprising them in person. Rather than grabbing the shotgun and firing a round into the air, they can look at the note, laugh at it together, look at the website, and more than likely they will send me an email.
Still, the surprise of being told in person that your home is at the exact geographic center of an entity has just got to make you feel good. It’s kind of like when someone calls you to tell you that your phone number, 816.746.8486, can also be spelled 816.SHOTGUN — that makes your day. So take a moment, and call someone you don’t yet know; let that person know that their number is 972.RAUCOUS or 212.DA.PARTY, may they’re having a raucous party as we speak.
Went to the Geographic Center of the Continental U.S. This picture was taken in Lebanon, where the center is clearly marked. Ugly little town. Osborne, Kansas, however, is gorgeous, and it is here that the exact center lies. No pictures of Osborne for you, sorry.
beyond traveling and setting up pipes and making connections and compiling a collective portrait and exchanging ideas / music / images with all of our new friend and learning a little bit of arabic, or swiss or japanese i have established some goals - mostly - for myself… and once you write something down, it feels much more permanent… so here goes…
- while still protecting my skin, to become a nice golden tan color
- continue to eat healthy - be it out of a cooler or at a restaurant
- create a sizable amount of projects on my own, separate from the installations - starting with my quilt
- finishing all worthy projects i begin - starting with my quilt, except for those to be coated in porcelain…that part i will wait on.
- draw more in a sketchbook - i will buy a new one, clean fresh start
- stay up later, get up earlier
- read at least 6 books - of various kinds (not just murder mysteries. as wonderful as they are) and more adult (no more harry potters. as wonderful as they are)
- enjoy what time i have - where i am and with who is around me, despite all the mosquitoes.
ok… i guess i’ll go get started.
it’s official. we are off on the road, with no apartment to go back to and a wide country spread out before us, the tour has begun… the blog is a little late in catching up with us. we have already had two installations of ONE, in Nebraska City and at the Art Farm, near Grand Island, Nebraska. both have been fairly successful and have yielded some friends. thank you to all of the participants of both cities; especially Noah. we decided you were great and if it wasn’t for you being so young, we probably would have brought you with us.
