REMAINS (2024)

            To remain, verb

                         – to continue to exist, to stay in a place

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          Remains, noun

                          – what is left behind

 

Each morning at sunrise, I walk the dirt roads at the northern edge of Joshua Tree National Park. Since 2016, about three thousand times, I have walked variations of the same route, observing the intersecting vehicular and animal tracks on the road, evidence of the tenuous coexistence of animal and human life in the desert. During the pandemic, I started noticing new evidence on the road, objects that had fallen from construction trucks – nails, bolts, washers, screws, a wrench, a wooden ruler, pieces of rusty metal, a single work glove, and more. I started collecting these objects and bringing them home, arranging them in patterns, drawing them, and thinking about the stories they contain. The more objects I collected, and the more time I spent with them, holding them in my hands, the more fascinating they became. They became a way to think about the web of human and environmental relationships in which housing is enmeshed. 

 

I thought about the many hands who have touched these objects, from sourcing the materials to manufacturing them to using them as tools, and how each person has a different story. I thought about the different buildings such tools have helped create, whether for locals or visitors and the tension between the local housing crisis and the tourist economy. I thought about the different reasons people live in the desert, whether as a multi-generational resident or longtime transplant or newcomer. I thought about those who moved to the desert during the pandemic for its quiet open spaces and those for whom the desert during the pandemic was lonely and isolating. I thought about the history of this place in both human and geologic scales, from the water table and septic systems to the rocks and coyotes and creosote bushes, and the myriad ways the fragile desert environment is impacted by human activity, including but not limited to construction. I thought about the generations of Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Maarênga’yam, and Shoshone who continue to steward this land. And I thought about the ways these objects resonated with my personal lineage; my parents had a small building company and I grew up visiting and playing on construction sites and around the blueprints and tools and piles of supplies that were transformed through labor into family homes. 

 

And throughout, I thought about the fact that I was able to choose to live in the desert.

 

I drew the objects at life size, then much larger, then suspended them on fishing wire to create multiple shadows, and arranged them like blueprints or land use maps. I started to see them as complicated signifiers for intersecting and sometimes competing narratives about home and land, about safety and security, and about access and protection. 

 

I am an uninvited guest on this land that has been stewarded for generations by the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Maarênga’yam, and Shoshone people. These objects, my daily walks, and my creative practice invite me to think about what it means to remain in this place. 

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This body of work was created in 2023 for "Animal | Vegetable | Mineral," a two-person show at Twentynine Palms Art Gallery, January 2024 with Douglas Blanc.