Friday, August 6, 2010

The Launch

In 1986, I stumbled on some photos of Andy Warhol’s1986 artistic, icon series Cowboys and Indians. In 2006, these particular images surfaced in my psyche when I moved to rural SE Arizona from Ann Arbor, MI. Here, outside of Safford, I started off by building a small horse ranch at my new home, with an art studio, which I named the RocknW Ranch. With my masters from the University of Michigan, I took my MSW and hired into a position at the local hospital as a medical social worker in their home health and hospice program. The job entailed a great deal of travel into rural parts which I found attractive since the area was new to me. Quite a few of my patients lived in remote areas of Graham, Greenlee and Cochise counties. I discovered that GPS was of no use to me, in trying to find a patient’s home, when they lived on the far side of a mountain or hidden away in a valley. I have had to shoo cattle out of the road in order to get by or drove up a dirt road, with a steep drop off into a rocky gulch.


One day I decided to drive over to Tombstone for lunch. There was a café that made the best buffalo burgers. I walked down the cowboy town’s wooden sidewalks – competing for space with hoards of overseas tourists. They appeared to attempt to capture glimpses of the old west through the ever present cameras in front of their faces. It appeared to me as if they were in search of what they viewed on reels of Hollywood film. I pictured them in comfortable seats at the cinema or in their homes across the Atlantic or the Pacific.

Speaking of reels of Hollywood film, as I approach many of my patients’ homes, I often hear the sounds of western films through their screen doors. One time, the wife of a hospice patient thought he was in a coma. This assumption quickly changed when she turned the TV channel from Gunsmoke to Oprah. Even though the patient’s eyes didn’t open nor did he speak, his arms began to wave wildly in disapproval! Once she figured out she was to change the TV channel back to Gunsmoke, he calmed down and resumed his peaceful sleep. Nothing can replace cowboy Americana.

I launched my Cowboy and Indian Icon Found Art Project in the summer of 2009. My work as a mixed media artist partially included collecting found objects and discarded books. I’m also passionate about old toys. All my adult life I’ve created art pieces made of found objects, book covers and discarded literature illustrations.

In 1996, my claim to fame came about when my nationally touring art was banned. This event happened when it was scheduled to be in Independence, MO – the home of our 33rd president, Harry Truman. The media coverage spread like a virus from being in print in USA Today to being spoofed on the nationally televised Saturday Night Live. After the completion of the tour, some of the art pieces went on exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum before finding a permanent home at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan’s special collections library.

When I first got settle into my art studio here in rural AZ, I began collecting the old animal bones and skulls that I found when I walked or rode through the desert. I then wrote accounts from people’s lives that I met on my daily travels through SE rural Arizona - on the bones. Maybe someday I’ll exhibit these art pieces in an art gallery. Maybe not.

I bought a package of plastic “Cowboy and Indian” figures at the local dollar store. After gluing them on rocks in battle positions, I wrote my email address and numbered each one individually. On my daily travels, I photograph, document and give them a new home in usually a remote place like an abandoned, country house or at another location that catches my fancy. Then, if someone finds one of my art pieces and decides to email me at the address on the bottom of the rock – I email them back a list of questions to answer about their experience and their perception of the plastic figures glued on to the rock. So far, I’ve been in touch with one person from Texas who decided to contact me after he found one of the art pieces close to the Apache reservation.

After growing up outside of Detroit during the race riots – I became intrigued with the dynamics of racial tension. Now I live in a place, with rich old western lore, and its own kind of racial tension. This is where the iconic racial tension and misunderstandings of the “Cowboys and Indians” received a great deal of their origin. Now I’m getting the Hispanic, Caucasian and Native American modern slants on why folks” just can’t get along.”

I never intended to keep a blog on The Cowboy and Indian Icon Art Project. Besides my work with hospice and home health, I have a Noah’s Ark of chickens, dogs, horses and cats to tend to - let alone spending some time in my art studio or dabbling in fiction writing. Then on a holiday visit back to Ann Arbor, I met Mary Cambruzzi, owner of FOUND gallery. She strongly encouraged me to write a blog.

She talked me into it. Here it is – The Cowboy and Indian Icon Found Art Project - Part II.

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