Recent work:

 

Read Meliss Lamberton (especially the end)

             It is very important to me that people begin to understand these discussions, as they dig deep into our culture, our ways of thinking and the projection into the future for us people.

The discussion about eradication of Russian olives (and tamarisk I am sure) in the Santa Fe River bed, Michael Smith and the city of Santa Fe is of great interest because sometimes the people who are thinking that they are doing so much good and are so determined to make the world pure and native are, sadly, xenophobic in nature, are not fully informed and are tilting at windmills  to change something back to a past condition that seems idyllic and perfect. It might be good to look at people who have a deep interest in the subject and actually know what they are talking about as we confront these decisions; to have diverse populations or follow eradication based groups that are needlessly fighting off change.  Take some out when necessary and leave some there and love them for what they really are. Please read this by Melissa Lamberton: http://www.terrain.org/articles/27/lamberton.htm 

    -from a recent submission for letters to the editor Santa Fe New Mexican

This person, Melissa Lamberton, speaks volumes in her understanding of the nature of eradication efforts and of the facts on the ground about these trees that are so much in the news and the stimulus, not by their wills of course, for large amounts of money and emotional energy to be passed around.  The need is for people to know the facts about these trees and get past the amazingly unfounded myths about them also.  I have researched this subject for quite a while now and have come to the exactly same conclusions as Melissa and so she speaks for me when she talks; as if we had been working together on this for years.  I also love her writing style and sense of place and fairness.  I hope that this information and these ideas take root! 

She also  has written other interesting pieces on cougars and mountain sheep.

Thor's Stones

As time passes and priorities and poetic and aesthetic values start to settle out into a sort of value hierarchy, a few things rise to the surface and stones are one of them.  Rocks are so stunning aesthetically and as something to contemplate that I have often thought that if they were not quite so prevalent, then just any single stone, put into a museum; would be the most modern and fantastic looking sculpture there.  I have collected rocks all of my life and now live along a creek with a bed of a wonderful and wide selection and collection of stones, giving a lifetime of pleasure to be a part of their world, so intimately involved in looking at them and working with them.  I recently carved a bathroom sink basin out of a plutonic rock from Spirit Valley; using diamond bits and blades and various hand and power tools to create a wonderful natural and functional piece.  I have found an ancient stone hatchet, which is a veritable combination tool; a mono, a hammer, a weapon; and it fits like a glove inside your grip.  Also I have found many arrow and spear  heads and a broken metate that I  found as I grabbed to use it as a shim for a concrete form only to notice that it was what it was.  A few days ago I was hiking up a steep embankment, rather cliff face and was with five friends who were also on the “game/wildlife/deer” trail  The going was difficult partly due to the steep incline and partly due to the ubiquitous sluffing-off sandstone in this area which created hazards because no hand or foot  hold felt all that safe.  We stopped on a  possibly nondescript spot halfway up and I looked down and I noticed a beautiful reddish and tan, sort of oval and convex domed river rock sunken into the soil, and  I immediately excavated few inches of soft earth around it with my hands to reveal the full dome of the stone.  I lifted it up carefully only to discover that there was a healthy herd of ants, large and fast and sort of what I call “honey ants”, under it, so I let it back down, saying, “I love this unusual stone that, to me, obviously, was brought here and I will pick it up on the way back and take it home.  My comrades, of course, heard me say this and we had a brief discussion about me doing that and the nature of the stone, being a beautiful “river rock”.  We poked around the top of the ridge and what I found was an awesome, large, flat rectangular stone shelf on the top of the ridge furnished with a small sandstone wedge propped horizontal to create a small low bench and next to it a sort of domed table like stone that had cracked in half and had a few rocks on top of it and this stone had  some very indistinct etching of initials on it.  As we reached the mid point of our descent from this historic ridge, I heard two voices ahead of me simultaneously exclaim, “It’s a metate!”  I walked down towards them and there they were holding “my stone” that I had vowed to pick up and carry back if we came that way, having turned it over now and, surely, it was a beautiful, obvious concave surface worn by many years of use and smooth and beautiful.  I held it and someone said, “There should be a mono right here too” and so we glanced around and , sure enough, there was a beautiful mono in the midst of a number of similar sized stones on the slope at my feet.   This was an amazing experience for all of us!

To cap this story off, there is another one wrapped into that day’s adventure: at the crest of this hill was a crag which had the distinct shape of an Indian’s head, we thought.  This was our original goal to attain and so I and Alan headed right up to the top of it.  The crag was narrow and not ample for walking around, but good enough to navigate carefully.  I turned towards Alan just as he was leaping across an abyss/crevasse and I was so frightened by what I saw; his profound danger as he lept; that I called out to him, “Oh man, watch out”!   He just made the leap and I was profoundly relieved as I was envisioning a disaster up there.  I went around that spot, not daring to jump it myself and approached him as he was on his hands and knees looking at something.  I came closer and he was just beginning to pick up turquoise stones.  He explained that he jumped the crevasse and then, landing, he saw turquoise on the ground and was thinking, ‘Puebloans have been up here’.  Then he realized they were the stones from his own turquoise necklace which must have burst open during his daring leap and fell to the ground in front of him.  We talked as we picked them out of the prickly pear cactus and the little cracks and the soil and he talked about his Navajo old woman elder friend who had stated to him some years ago, when he was bemoaning having broken a turquoise jewelry piece, in her quiet older voice, hushed, “…oh no, it is good to have it break and to wear your turquoise because it is, as it breaks, saving you from some disaster or other!”  We now understood that some powers may have been at work here, just as she had said.  A little later Alan and I decided to go back up that crag for another excusion, by impulse, and I saw him bend down and pick up another piece of turquoise.  It had fallen out of his pocket when he had descended earlier and would have been there for ages had we not had the impulse to go back up this round-about way!  Hmmm…..

So I am hoping that these stone stories and their shadows and beauty and power will assist us in our search for meaning to our lives and as we sort out our priorities.

 

May 2, 2014   Thor V Sigstedt    Spirit Valley,  New Mexico  along Galisteo Creek

I Love Nature......or "Cheep Trills"

 

Often we hear that expression, 'I love nature',  and it rings true despite the ‘cruelty’ of predation, the devastation of ‘acts of nature’ like earthquakes or mudslides and the occasional slaps in the face of branches, bites of spiders and other inconveniences like the cold or heat or dog bites or chickens pecking and eating each other.  I love sunsets and the glint of the sun on water, the textures of rocks and dead trees and the stars and the beauty of life forms walking around, the sleekness of a cougar and the oddity of a buffalo, the attraction of a buffalo gourd and just walking around in ‘it’; feeling the breeze, feeling the earth sponge beneath my feet, getting the compositions of the players (the twigs and flowers and branches and sky and algae and grasses and light and leaves and the smells and a bird or two)  in nature all commingling together .  The last few days sort of snuck up on me this time, though and kind of forced me to look and then think (god forbid).

What happened was: well, first I went into a wilderness park with my grandchildren and walked deep into it and was on a crest that actually had a bench way up there (despite being in the wilderness)and so we stopped and sat and snacked.  I heard the sound that I know is turkeys off in the woods and they did not stop, so I loosened up my lips and sort of hummed out of them while shaking my head side to side frantically while my lips banged wildly against themselves and made a credible gobble.  The turkeys in the woods responded, then moved closer, then came into a clearing and every time I ‘gobbled’, they did back and then a male framed himself perfectly in my view and spread out his feathers in full display; a perfect snapshot of the situation and then walked out of view just as I got the camera out.  Then we went to the ocean briefly, a bit of a drive, and there we were in deep profound nature and waves crashing on the rocky shore and on rock islands in full view displaying Victoria fall effects as the water subsided from the rock face after the crashes and with a sea gull standing stoicly and  close to me on top of the rock, never moving despite the uncomfortable conversational distance boundaries that I have known for them,  as I climbed a boulder island shelf  to experience the experience with Torsten, the 1 year old grandson.  I took  many pictures only to discover later that I had taken the memory card out to download into my computer earlier and forgot to replace it. 

Upon returning to Spirit Valley and Santa Fe, I walked outside in the middle of the night to grab some more firewood as I had run low in the house, having mostly smaller sticks to burn as the winter is mostly over and the trip to California had disrupted my gatherings and cuttings.  I had seen a full moon through the bathroom glazing earlier so I glanced up to see where it was out there in the later night sky and all I saw was a dull blood red moon that had the appearance of a moon in smog in the city.  It took some adjusting time but then I decided that I was looking at a full eclipse and so I gazed for a while and went back in only checking it out they way we do these days and , sure enough, what I experienced was what I thought it was. 

Earlier that day I had been down by the creek and there was a lot of algae due to the constant lowish flow of the water and the nutrients in the creek and the warmish weather we had been experiencing.  I decided to touch it and then move the slippery glumps from a waterfall-like spot and clear it out and threw it up on the bank where I considered that it might make better soil up there and promote stabilization.  I poked around and looked at the willows  I had jammed into the rivers bank in an area that had been devastated by a large flood and lost a lot of the cut bank and I wanted them to grow and stabilize, again, that area.  I found some alive and swollen with life and ready to bud and leaf and I was happy about that.

Then I was called for jury selection in town and I was somewhat conflicted as I got into my recently deceased mother’s old Toyota Tercel, blue, that I had decided looked more artistically and philosophically interesting if it had a simple old rack of aluminum clamps and barnwood 2 x 4s and some steel  pipes stubbed on it and a large interesting rustic weathered root/tree branch affair with lots of interest and legs and curves and sculptural qualities that I had extricated from a spot up near Montezumas Castle along the Gallina River in Las Vegas; exercising what I call “artist’s license”’; a self- proclaimed right to do just what I was doing.  I got into the rig knowing that it was somewhat inconsistent with the mainstream situation of being on a jury in a courtroom downtown; I still have ambivalence and some shame about the vehicle due to its age, its wear, it lack of moderness.  It has the same qualities that an old dead tree has and that the root on top of it has; the feeling you have when you look at a very old person; a combination of repulsion and attraction to the process that is right in front of you.  My art, as an artist, often deals with this subject; the texture of life in its less than slick moments, often, reflecting the question; what is nature, what is death, what is old age and how can I relate in various ways.  I am not sure it is cutting edge, but, depite the uneasiness I feel; it is what I do.  It has to do with honesty and staring into the face of nature in its less glorious but perhaps more profound ‘wabi sabi’ moments.  The car runs well and gets good mileage and is a pleasure to drive, so I take it out often, despite the cringing feelings  and shame I also have.  I think I got out of jury duty because of the same peripatetic overly circumspect nature that I have and I could not quite grasp that I would be judging something with the limitation that I would not know what the penalty for the crime being examined was; I could put a heroin addict, if he was one, in jail when he should probably be in a situation that addressed his addiction more fruitfully.  There were quite a few others who felt the way I did and it was a great education for me. 

I walked back to the parking garage with a friend of mine from my early recovery from alcohol addiction, from some 20 years ago and then I remembered that I think I owed him a lunch from back in those days, so I invited him to the Bite to satisfy that old debt.  I got into the car and headed for the café which was maybe 4 to 6 blocks away and I heard what sounded like the flap of a strap on the roof of the car and I was puzzled because I study the nature of materials as an artist and a craftsperson and as most people do, actually, and I had a hard time identifying this sporadic sound situation.  It did not sound like there was an immediate cause for concern and might be a bungee cord that had gotten loose and was knocking around some in the breeze of the motion.  I got out and then there it was; a pigeon was face to face with me and I could see its toes tapping on the roof as it walked towards the edge and we were locked in the moment in something that I found interesting, especially in the category of the love of nature.  It walked towards me from under the sticks then lept off the blue sedan into the blue sky without an further ado.  Of course, I did not have time to get a picture, again.  I did though, this morning, as I prepared mentally to go back to the shop and start carving the panel I am making for some furniture, for the door, cause she wanted, perhaps, a bird on a twig and I had drawn the twigs and branches and pine needle motif and the birds there, based on one (a little sort of curved billed thrasher) I had cast in cast iron a while back, but it looked too small, I thought the other day.  So now, with the help of this event, I found what I was going to carve on the door; a pigeon; my new friend  in town…..and commemorate our journey from the county court house to the desert inn. 

BJ photo by Debbie

I have been looking for this photo by my great friend and photographer, Debbie Hickey and so here is one from that series she did some years ago

Case Eagle in bronze by Thor

I made this eagle for Darryl who loves his Case backhoe and was aware of the Eagle on the globe that was a logo/trademark item and so he had done a lot for me over the years and I decided to make him this piece.

Going Up Sacred Raven's Mound at Night

Going Up Sacred Raven’s Mound at Night

The walk up  the “sacred raven’s mound” saddle was familiar, except this time it was dark and there was heavy smoke in the air, flakes of ash wafting in the flashlight beam and I had a shovel in one grip and a communicating device in the other.  The fire must be nearby and I want to help.   There was noise up on the west ridge and I could see their eyes glinting and hear their hooves against the stones and the earth; the sound small hooves make; there was a group of deer above me.  It was fear inspiring; dreamlike.

I  spent some time up here  years ago meandering with my 8 year old daughter on Sundays and we would “mine” precious green stones from the high quality red clay bank.  It was a special thing to do as we assuaged our hearts.  I had, back then, been poaching dead firewood along the trail, and lugging it to where the truck waited.  This was before the drought of 2000, the beetle kill, an amazingly well thinned forest and the gain of hundreds of dead piñons , replacing huge cottonwoods  that I quartered and burned over the previous 20 years .  It was a gnarly old trunk with a pointed branch that, I found out, was like a tusk or an antler and I tripped and fell on it, ripping my jeans and it poked hard at my inner thigh, hurting  a long time afterwards.  I remember my first experience hunting in those days and I got me a big bull elk with a massive rack and we cut it apart in the dark and were carrying the enormously heavy head and antlers to the truck (it took the three of us) and one of us got sort of gored by the horns and he groaned in pain, like me and the piñon.  I learned that the way these elements are made; the tree and the antlers; made to easily catch something, grab what it needed somehow like a devil’s claw does .  I use the “rack” to dry clothes on in the greenhouse and I toss them casually in its direction and they get hung ( I wondered if this drying “rack” was ‘insulting’  and then I realized it was a great tool; wrested of course, from the natural world as we sought to eat).

The saddle and hill, which looks like a huge head rising out of the earth;  has long ‘arms’  on both sides.  I named it ‘sacred raven’s mound’ as I finally saw the ‘arms’ as wings and the ‘head’ as the skull of a raven.  It’s a very special look-out , invoked, I thought, by the suggestive powers of a raven (the only animal that actually fashions/creates tools, it seems; like bending a wire to create a hook; not just poking sticks like an ape might).  I peered down upon what I knew to be a huge basin, the glint of railroad tracks disappearing around a low hill.  I looked for the glow of a wildfire and saw nothing.  The ash was from distant Arizona, so I leaned on the shovel, caught my breath and walked back down, past the crag on the left that was a sentinel overlooking the gorge and the snaking streambed five hundred feet below somewhere.  I knew there was more to this boulder, as I had discovered its ‘star crossed lover’, frozen for all time as another granite being; one with a natural arched opening at its base (something I had never seen in granite before)  she being across the gorge and up a steep gulch.  I had climbed ‘er once as I sought solitude from being a step-parent and got up there in the early morning,  then discovered that I was frozen in fear as I tried to descend; easier to climb than come down from, I learned.   I feel there is a great myth to tell about these giant stones and have thought about it many times.  But there was something missing and then I saw, a few weeks ago; a solitary stone propped naturally, like its “parents”; like the perfect child, almost a standing baby, but not in sight of the mother, but on the slope overlooking the waterfalls and the pools way down below….just standing there innocently lost and lost for so long that light green lichen, which always looks youthful somehow, was all over it.  These characters were also silent observers as the ash from two hundred miles away wafted by their ‘nostrils’ too, all of them, except for me, really……indifferent and stoic.  They, in fact, ‘saw’ everything; warm days and bitter nights; knee deep in snow and crowned with the stars.  Not curious, themselves, but just part of the mystery involving… what to do.  I thought…….. “I am obsessed with nature, with the flower, with the root. It is all linked to my situation as a… (person)… exiled from…( my)… primordial.” *

The leaves shimmer against the blue-grey sky, in the breeze, being near the end of the twig, which is near the end of the branch; the leaf is branched with veins which mirror the branching and the swaying tree is rooted by underground branches and the system is magnificent in its ability to communicate with both the earth and the sky; creating itself and sustaining itself through a communication and chemistry with air, water, light and nutrients.  It is responding and working with and in the sky; with the wind, the warmth, the dryness.  It is antennae sending and receiving messages from anything that will listen:  ‘look at me and see more and more and more’, like a fractal in the forest, alchemists, a Druid prayer sent out into the multiverse, saying; “…there is a lot going on here, so take a good look and think about what I am doing”; something like that…….so……just want to say……..“may the forest; be with you”.....

* - Aimé Césaire