El Malpais
Mixed media
Artists Statement
“Bad Country” — Coronado’s expedition report title to his Spanish king. Uniting two words into a single descriptor, he summed up the landscape and its people during his travels through uncharted area of what is now the Southwest and northern Mexico: harsh and unforgiving. The US maintains a preserve retaining the descriptive “Malpais”. This work is a reflection of what that must have been for the Conquistadores, unprepared for the hostile land and native peoples who sensed the danger the incursion would bring. The Spanish were not prepared for the resistant land and its people they intended to claim.
Artist Bio
My work is construction: I build art. It works best when it dictates its own shape. I help make it happen but frequently get in the way of progress.
I steal visuals and action from Nature: the architecture of geology, the spread of till and sediment across the desert, the shape of water; the sense of space or of confinement, and of being overpowered by it.
Contact Info
(208) 863-1937