CROSSROADS: DUST TO DUST

At its core, CROSSROADS: DUST TO DUST is about impermanence. Seasons. Change. Life and death. 

Intersecting roads and metaphorical junctions allow us to cross paths with mysterious strangers. We build walls and dwellings for our families and communities, while witnessing divine storms erode and transform these very structures.

What remains is an imperfect tapestry of our interwoven lives, new beginnings, ends, holes, cracks, and spaces, revealing the transitory nature of existence.

Crossroads exist everywhere in New Mexico.  One early example is Pecos Pueblo, whose rock-and-mud villages were built around AD 1100.  Since then, the area became an important trade center connecting indigenous cultures and later attracting Spanish settlers, confederate forces, pioneers, and homesteaders.  Presently, the intersection of I-25 and I-40 known as the "Big I" allows multiple thousands of people to pass through the state every day.  In relation to biodiversity, we are at a critical crossroads physically and metaphorically.  What does our future look like?  What is our evolving relationship to nature?  Can crucial choices be made now that determine the fate of life on Earth?

Drawing inspiration from the Terra Prime Blueprint deck of cards (The Mysterious Stranger representing New Mexico, The Divine Storm representing biodiversity, and the Imperfect Tapestry representing my artistic practice), my vision for a future site-specific public art project involves building two intersecting adobe walls (forming an "x" from a bird's-eye view) that will crack and crumble over time, revealing how barriers we build ultimately succumb to nature.  Four secure benches will each face one of the four internal corners of the structure.  As the adobe walls start to break down and eventually disintegrate, the benches will remain intact, allowing observers to sit across from each other and contemplate the impermanence of the world.  Despite our attempts to control the environment, we are reminded that nothing lasts forever, and ultimately the land will exert itself.