Jamison Chas Banks

Banks will create a seemingly camouflaged Tire advertisement that will be fixed to the exterior of the Gas Station Museum in Milan. This advertisement echos the theme of Flow by acknowledging the advertising sign/billboard history of Route 66, interconnected economic systems, and the notion that the town of Grants existed in aesthetic cooperation with many other communities along the Route. The obvious indication is that tires or the wheel allow mobility and flow. The Sign Language tires emulate indigenous patterns and repetitious motifs. With the generic tribal aesthetic of Grants ever present, the notion of “Indian Sign Language” is an underlying current for this work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rick Fisher

You Are Here: The Milan Columns was created specifically for the Gas Station Museum, its exact location, and its place within the extended area of Cibola County. Like gas stations of old, it serves to orient visitors to the area’s many points of interest. We hope that you may travel to them, or through your inner vision gain an understanding of these places and of your vital role within our shared environment. Equally important, it is created to enhance an awareness of your place within the larger environment of our Earth and the Sun. The installation also calls attention to our past and present abuse of the Earth and its atmosphere, practices that must change if we are to survive as a species. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elisabeth and Mark Horst

The Horsts will create a field of flowing hand dyed fabric ribbons, staked in undulating patterns. The translucent fabric pathways invite us to walk into the structure and experience the changing light, color and direction. This piece is intended to reflect the flow of energy we see in the movement of water and the patterns of erosion in New Mexico’s desert landscape—and specifically the topography of Grants—but in a way that invites us into a close and physical experience of that flow. The layout of the ribbons is based on a topographical map of the area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¡Mezcla! (Ruben Olguin & Joanna Keane López)

NGC 2623 is a large eroding sculpture made from earthen materials, plant paper and native seeds. The temporary installation also acts as a droning soundscape within a listening garden. The work examines the flow of time, the flow of history, the flow of plants and the flow of people’s influence on the landscape over time. Concurrently, the installation considers the native and invasive plant species that are now home to the area left by people along the migration trails and transportation highways of the region. “NGC 2623” is an astronomical body of colliding galaxies drawn together through inevitability with a violent history and now approaching equilibrium. The sculpture’s form is derived from this galactic formation. Inside the structure is a small garden of native plants which creates an isolated indigenized ecological space. Audio plays back within the garden to subtly reveal the mechanized noise of the modern world from a plant’s perspective. 

 

 

 

 

 

Billy Joe Miller

Cibola Cairn is a temporary installation that concentrates local found materials from Cibola County into the form of an obelisk or monolith. Miller will use materials such as tree parts, cholla wood, native and invasive plant life and discarded material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Utigard

Lava Rocks! Much of the New Mexican geography was shaped by fiery volcanic geologic processes. The landscape around Grants, NM is no exception. The lava flows, cinder cones, and other volcanic features at El Malpais National Monument all demonstrate the rampant volcanic activity in the area. Utigard has installed numerous fiery red and electric orange painted rocks in the park’s rock gardens, and arranged them in vein and lava flow patterns. This work is made in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marion Claire Wasserman

In A Flow of Blessings, Wasserman has created prayer flags with blessings on fabric that specifically bless this place, this land, this water, this mountain, these minerals, this resource, and these people. Approximately 300 feet of blessings (12” squares) in bold type, flutter in the desert wind between trees. Another chain of blessings made from dried sunflowers and clay seed balls simultaneously wraps around trees, adding the sound of rustling dried flowers and seeds, to be carried by the wind and the elements. These words and these seeds and blossoms are offerings and the visitors will be invited to take away the blessing that speaks to them. Hopefully, by the end of the installation, all will have been received and only the banner strings will remain.