Joshua Tree National Park - Artist in Residence Day 2
Collaborative Painting
I spent today painting with 6th graders at a local school. This is the same group of kids I worked with during my fall residency here. For this project, I'm building on my prior classroom and field trip instruction as we create three large, 30x48," landscape paintings in acrylic on canvas. Each represents a different area of the park during a different time of day. I love these kinds of projects, working with just 2-3 kids at a time, helping them develop individual parts that together become a cohesive whole. I'll be spending a number of days at the school painting with the kids this week and next, but plan to fit in some extended hiking time over the weekend.
Even though I haven't had much time in the park yet, I am so content to be here. I love the mojave fiercely, the long stretches of road, the desert plants, the expansive space. I drove home from the school with the remarkable Mount San Gorgonio and the San Bernardino Mountains on the horizon. In the afternoon sun, these mountains are layered in such perfect cutouts, lighter as they recede into the distance, like forms cut from shades of blue paper. They don't look real. The camera cannot do justice to this phenomena, and a painting would fail to convey the expansive sense one gets from watching them tower over the desert floor from a distance, the peculiar sense of being simultaneously minuscule and all-encompassing. I began to feel prematurely nostalgic. This time will go fast, and Joshua Tree is not a quick drive from home, so it may be a long time before I have reason to return. I cherish the deep sense of belonging that comes from my travels as an artist in residence, finding home in a diversity of places. This connection to place drives my work, and the chance to exist within a variety of communities and cultures allows for an understanding of the interdependence between the personality of a place and its people. Added to that are the unique issues of national parks, the struggle to balance preservation with visitation. While often dramatically different on the surface, these various parks, landscapes, and communities are remarkably similar at their core. I am ever grateful for the privilege of these experiences, the chance to learn, to question, to connect.
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| Getting started. |
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| Foundation for a view of the pinto basin and Cholla Cactus. |
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| Foundation for a Lost Horse Valley landscape. |