El Ditch
etching &
monoprint, 2015
A wall of water. A poor image. For the flash flood of the desert poorly resembles water. It looks like a loose pudding or a thick dense soup, thick as gravy, dense with mud and sand, lathered with scuds of bloody froth, loaded on its crest with a tangle of weeds and shrubs and small trees ripped from their roots.
-Edward Abbey, passage from Desert Solitaire
It doesn’t rain a lot in the Southwest, which is where I'm from. When it does, it comes as an unapologetic force. The storms, or monsoons, effortlessly rip trees from the ground, transforming the earth. The panorama shifts from one form into another, sculpting mesa tops, and pushing it's remains elsewhere. Although considerably destructive, they are welcomed and celebrated. Storms are the empathy of the desert. For the southwest is perpetually in a state of drought, and the destruction that is left behind is a reminder of the healing. Taking away, yet breeding new life.
