Grilled Tofu with Nancy Holt

photo by jordan squires

Celebrating the life of artist Nancy Holt and remembering a trip taken years ago across the Great Basin Desert to see this pictured work, Sun Tunnels, where the vast expansive desert is framed and collected between a composite material and it's absence. I'm so inspired by this work. Holt felt a sameness with the West, with the desert, and describes this connection to landscape in words that resonate with my spirit. She extended herself into the work and its engaged landscape in a way that was unpretentious, "thrilled" by the desert's seemingly undiscovered potential, its mysterious edges, its complex ecosystems.

What does it mean to make sculptures far off the dirt road, traceable only with GPS and directions that, when realized, appear as blue squiggle lines trailing across an expanse of uninterrupted beige? Generous and situated, available to all who choose to make the voyage, with no rules or fees or hours or dress code, this work offers itself without constraint.

When we visited Sun Tunnels we sat in their shade. We grilled maple tofu on the camp stove.  

Thankful for the many accomplished women whose work inspires me to challenge the systems and structures of art and its market, to be precise and decided, and to play! To enjoy exploration into the mysteries of the land that are, in essence, explorations into the mysteries of our selves and each other.

NRG