Soft leaf halos of new growth decorate the highest branches of the trees by White Rock Lake; early spring and its pastoral beauty have arrived. Watercolor washes and daffodils harmonize by the roadsides. Soon, soon, a riot of green.
We are traveling down to the Hill Country in a few weeks, and I am planning my trip with a sense of urgency. The terrible news that a new pipeline was approved through the Edwards Aquifer (in spite of significant protesting and legal efforts) has been a huge motivation for me in my current series. What began as a socio-political exploration of our border regions has morphed into a larger body of work exploring our sacred landscape and the effects of industry on our shared home.
Stewardship is recognizing that we abide in a gift whose creation is above human comprehension or engineering.
With that in mind, I’m continuing with my Big Bend project, but I am also collecting materials from central Texas and the Texas coast. The land here is so vast and varied. Texas, my Texas: encompassing so much natural beauty, and marked by Industry’s dystopian claws throughout. Texas and its Texans are a unique case: wild and rebellious, independent, multicultural, brash, neighborly, proud. People who dwell in the land have a special relationship with it, and are willing to fight to protect it… but we are a haven for oil and banking, and the individual voices we hold dear are threatened by a political machine that has deep pockets and popular appeal.
Y’all know, if you’ve driven west of Sweetwater through oil fields dotted by controlled, industrial fires, trash and tumbleweeds collecting on the highway fences. Pockets of flame wink wryly to the edge of vision. Or if you’ve been inside Baytown, with its sulfuric odor and metallic spires. You can’t quite grasp the scope of the machinery that makes all this possible unless you’ve seen it, smelled it, felt its hot breath in your face; and until you’ve been to Galveston on an August day and had to pick your way to the shore, retching, over a sandy field of dead fish… you don’t have a visceral idea of what is at stake.
I’ve abandoned architecture, at least for the moment, in favor of surreal landscapes and abstracted flora. They frame urgency with beauty- these vignettes remind me of what we all have to lose, what we so often overlook. In a matter of days, I’ll travel south collecting images and impressions of spring water and cedar trees and bluebonnets under a marbled, Hill Country sky. Cacti, magnolias and bluebonnets are a few of my favorite natural wonders from Texas. What are yours?
For more on the Permian Highway, check this out.
