02:01.010 --> 02:06.610
I'm a native El Pasoan, second generation.
My mother was born in this border city.

02:06.919 --> 02:10.470
My father came over when he was three years old
from Chihuahua,

02:10.759 --> 02:13.080
which is a city in northern Mexico.

02:13.720 --> 02:16.750
I think I've been strongly influenced by living
in this

02:16.919 --> 02:23.880
um, contentious space, the, um, friction, that
spot where these

02:23.880 --> 02:28.380
two nations rub together, uh, one nation, a
very wealthy,

02:28.520 --> 02:29.639
powerful nation.

02:30.250 --> 02:34.339
Another nation that has struggled to maintain
its identity,

02:34.699 --> 02:40.470
um, being sort of bombarded by our constant
roar from this side.

02:41.570 --> 02:48.210
I think it has affected my whole view of life
to look across at where I could have been born.

02:49.449 --> 02:56.300
Had my grandparents not come to this side at
the time of the Mexican revolution.

03:01.089 --> 03:07.759
I think it's, uh, especially schizophrenic for
any person of color in the world to be living

03:07.759 --> 03:11.639
in a culture where your language or your
culture is not the predominant one and you

03:11.639 --> 03:15.479
don't see yourself in books or in media.

03:15.889 --> 03:21.860
Um, I, I think for myself, uh, there was that
split, there was that split,

03:22.059 --> 03:25.130
especially when I lived in the Midwest of
having this,

03:25.179 --> 03:29.279
this private self, the private language,
language that one spoke at home,

03:29.380 --> 03:33.410
and then the public language that I was
educated in and the major that I,

03:33.460 --> 03:35.250
uh, was educated in was English.

03:35.889 --> 03:41.210
Uh, but then when I moved to the Southwest, uh,
what I was given permission to do from living

03:41.210 --> 03:47.490
here was to incorporate the voices I saw around
me, and those voices mixed Spanish with English

03:47.490 --> 03:52.770
a lot more than I'd ever heard in my life.
I had grown up with Spanish and English.

03:53.110 --> 03:57.460
That they were separate and they were also
private, and all of a sudden to come here and to

03:57.460 --> 04:02.250
see the Spanish on billboards and to go
into the bathroom and see graffiti half in

04:02.250 --> 04:05.539
English and half in Spanish and to see
it everywhere,

04:05.619 --> 04:11.059
not simply in street names but in all parts of
your life alive and living and all around you.

04:11.419 --> 04:12.580
So I started

04:12.884 --> 04:17.674
borrowing from the mixture of phrases that I
found in this particular place in this

04:17.674 --> 04:24.035
borderland region and using it to inspire me in
story titles, and especially to allow the

04:24.035 --> 04:28.954
characters themselves, who had never appeared in
Texana literature, who had never appeared

04:28.954 --> 04:32.195
in North American literature, to speak through
my stories.

04:33.679 --> 04:40.260
Dear San Antonio de Padua, can you please help
me find a man

04:40.799 --> 04:44.029
who isn't a pain in the algas?

04:44.640 --> 04:49.429
There aren't any in Texas, I swear, especially
not in San Antonio.

04:50.320 --> 04:55.399
Can you do something about all the educated
Chicanos who have to go to California to find a

04:55.399 --> 04:59.839
job?
I guess what my sister Irma says is true.

05:00.630 --> 05:04.890
If you didn't get a husband when you were in
college, you don't get one.

05:05.209 --> 05:10.970
I would appreciate it very much if you sent me
a man who speaks Spanish who at least can

05:10.970 --> 05:14.160
pronounce his name the way it's supposed to be
pronounced.

05:14.850 --> 05:19.730
Someone please who never calls himself Hispanic
unless he's applying for a grant from

05:19.730 --> 05:20.769
Washington DC.

05:48.769 --> 05:49.880
and

06:03.390 --> 06:09.529
Yeah I.

06:11.220 --> 06:17.750
The sources for my riding are here, here in
Shiprock, but also in the Navajo Nation in

06:17.750 --> 06:22.320
general.
It has to do with how the light is here,

06:22.519 --> 06:27.619
how the sun is, the kind of plants there are,
the texture of soil.

06:28.160 --> 06:32.350
It has to do with the way that people talk both
in Navajo and in English.

06:33.119 --> 06:37.130
And it has to do too with the way people
perceive language,

06:37.140 --> 06:41.859
which is very different from the way non-
Navajos perceive language.

06:44.010 --> 06:47.230
I I.

06:58.390 --> 07:03.600
And.
In Navajo they say that everything that a

07:03.600 --> 07:10.089
person says is blessed with different kinds of
wind and different colors of wind and that a

07:10.089 --> 07:16.910
person contains almost the whole atmosphere
within them and so when you say something,

07:17.000 --> 07:22.239
then it's just not you it's like the whole
world is is talking.

07:23.380 --> 07:28.230
So it has to do with honoring language, but it
has the ability to change things,

07:28.799 --> 07:32.549
to create things.
It's like in our stories, we,

07:32.839 --> 07:35.429
we see that we were created by language.

07:39.519 --> 07:43.320
What?
When you were born and took your first breath,

07:43.529 --> 07:48.609
different colors and different kinds of wind
entered through your fingertips and whirl on

07:48.609 --> 07:49.720
top of your head.

07:50.250 --> 07:54.640
Within us as we breathe, are the light breezes
that cool a summer afternoon.

07:55.010 --> 07:57.959
Within us the tumbling winds that precede rain.

07:58.290 --> 08:01.119
Within us sheets of hard thunder and rain.

08:01.410 --> 08:05.519
Within us thus fill layers of wind that sweep
in from the mountains.

08:05.850 --> 08:08.209
To see this blow on your hand now.

08:08.769 --> 08:15.559
Each sound we make evokes the power of these
winds, and we are at once gentle and powerful.

08:26.070 --> 08:32.630
I think in any native culture there is a much closer alliance with
nature. You understand things differently, you

08:32.630 --> 08:39.270
see so much more connection between everything: every animal, every human.
They all share one singular,

08:39.270 --> 08:45.619
cell, and somehow that sense has always been in me.
I guess that sense

08:45.770 --> 08:52.150
has always been in me, and I think that makes a big
difference.

08:52.520 --> 08:54.880
And I think that makes a big difference in
my painting.

08:54.900 --> 09:01.330
I like to have a sense of chaos and a sense
of randomness as I paint.

09:01.330 --> 09:03.750
I cannot paint with the paper vertically

09:04.210 --> 09:09.159
against a wall. I have to move the paper around continuously,
so I have no idea,

09:09.590 --> 09:14.919
which way is top and which way is bottom as I paint.

09:15.330 --> 09:19.210
Because of that, the work always seems
like it's in the round,

09:20.030 --> 09:24.979
and I think that comes from being Navajo too.
That sense of roundness is ingrained in you.

09:24.989 --> 09:29.409
Your house is built in the round. There is no square.
Square

09:29.440 --> 09:36.000
sort of deprives the life force.

09:36.020 --> 09:38.500
Well, there's been a history of landscape

09:38.739 --> 09:40.270
painting in New Mexico, specifically by people

09:41.169 --> 09:44.609
who have not lived in New Mexico but come here to paint the land and its energies

10:29.090 --> 10:34.330
or whatever it suggests to them, and many
different styles of landscape painting.

10:34.330 --> 10:41.210
Some of it very realistic, some of it very abstract, but most of it has always dealt in a
kind of traditional Renaissance space, looking out on the landscape.

10:41.210 --> 10:45.450
That kind of a perspective of looking out on the landscape.

10:45.950 --> 10:51.750
I'm really not interested in translating the land that way.

10:51.750 --> 10:56.179
I'm more interested in the quality of feeling of a place.

10:56.190 --> 10:58.979


10:59.469 --> 11:04.260


11:04.630 --> 11:07.510
Well, for me the Farm Go series is about a kind of
deconstructing the clues or signs of identities

11:46.099 --> 11:51.419
of individual and cultural identities from these remnants of
objects or materials that are left at the sites of the abandoned farms.

11:52.869 --> 11:59.830
So a painting like Farm Go's The Wife's Tale
specifically refers to the farmer's wife.

11:59.830 --> 12:05.809
It's about the materials that refer to the domestic environment, the interior spaces,
as well as the exterior spaces.

12:05.809 --> 12:09.789
So you have the windmill,

12:12.479 --> 12:13.479
That's the only thing out there on these abandoned farms that kind of guards the

12:21.140 --> 12:26.859
landscape, but you also have the linoleum that refers to the domestic environment or the

12:26.859 --> 12:32.119
floor inside the house.

12:32.419 --> 12:34.299


12:34.559 --> 12:38.390
That connection between the inside and outside.

12:38.390 --> 12:44.369
This painting is about that and the memories that remain.

12:44.369 --> 12:50.719
interior spaces, so it's layers, and I think of
it as a kind of excavation of memory and what

12:50.719 --> 12:54.580
went on here, it's like what went on in this
farm, uh,

12:54.609 --> 12:56.289
the linoleum knows.

13:10.750 --> 13:13.750
With the habitat pictures, I focused on
dwellings.

13:13.909 --> 13:19.669
I chose three sites in New Mexico that were all
in different states of disrepair or ruin.

13:20.030 --> 13:23.940
So for example, there's imagery from
villages at Laguna Pueblo,

13:24.390 --> 13:29.820
from a now defunct ranching village where there
are only ruins, uh, uh, called Progreso,

13:30.219 --> 13:35.770
and the wonderful town of Wagon Mound in the
north, it's basically a Hispanic Catholic

13:35.770 --> 13:38.460
village that was settled by the wagon trains.

13:41.890 --> 13:44.969
I think that place has been probably my central
theme.

13:45.080 --> 13:47.989
I mean, if not place, then home, and issues
about home,

13:48.039 --> 13:53.799
where one is connected, how one's rooted, how
one's family and past and psychology and

13:53.799 --> 13:59.559
mythology and culture, religion, gender, how
all these things keep one either connected or

13:59.559 --> 14:00.559
dislocated.

14:09.000 --> 14:13.909
People from the outside who come here come with
a lot of longing and desire to find

14:13.909 --> 14:16.419
something they haven't been able to find
anywhere else.

14:16.510 --> 14:20.390
And so in putting on those rose-colored glasses,
the whole thing becomes this kind of

14:20.390 --> 14:24.700
cotton candy, and I think the longer that
I've lived here,

14:24.859 --> 14:30.989
um, the world here has gotten more complex,
much more fraught with all sorts of very

14:30.989 --> 14:35.030
difficult issues about place and home and
things and change.

14:37.640 --> 14:42.919
In my own work, very quickly I tried to
represent that sense of all things happening at

14:42.919 --> 14:46.599
once, that when you walk in the present, your
past is there with you,

14:46.640 --> 14:51.429
your mythology, everything's there with you.
And so the task for me became: how does one

14:51.429 --> 14:55.719
represent that?
The sequential, extended, layered imagery was the

14:55.719 --> 14:58.880
answer for me.
That was how I experienced this place and

14:58.880 --> 15:03.280
that's how I, you know, basically began to
assemble these images.

16:14.679 --> 16:20.640
Well, it's usually on a day like today that I
decide it's time to go, and I'll drive into

16:20.640 --> 16:27.429
the mountain area just before it gets too cold and

16:27.679 --> 16:31.190
hopefully the roads will still be packed down
dry.

16:31.919 --> 16:38.890
And I, if I can, if other people are
available, and traditionally people

16:38.890 --> 16:41.130
went in groups, but sometimes I'll go alone.

16:42.340 --> 16:49.330
And I'll unload my picks and my buckets and

16:49.330 --> 16:56.130
I'll go to this place, and I'll have to look
around, and it's very similar in the way that it

16:56.130 --> 17:01.690
sounds here, the leaves, sounds, that sort of um.

17:01.965 --> 17:08.555
Fall sounds and it's crisp, and the sun is just
breaking through.

17:08.765 --> 17:13.395
It's such a beautiful thing for me that that's
when it begins, and I

17:13.474 --> 17:18.484
kneel down and start gathering my clay and
put it in buckets and then come home.

17:28.030 --> 17:28.040
Yeah.

17:37.920 --> 17:44.750
Well, I was taught, I think especially by

17:44.750 --> 17:51.430
my parents that it was possible to have this
flow during the day.

17:52.560 --> 17:59.459
That you did things like make a fireplace, and
you did things like

17:59.459 --> 18:05.060
raise your children and go gather food, whether
it was fishing or planting or whatever.

18:06.560 --> 18:11.780
And in this process of this kind of life, you
saw

18:13.099 --> 18:18.859
the most extraordinary things, because you were
conscious of all things around you of your

18:18.859 --> 18:25.709
environment.
And I think that's the Pueblo way of

18:25.709 --> 18:31.709
thinking, that nothing is really
compartmentalized, that things sort of just flow

18:31.709 --> 18:38.630
from one thing to the next, and I think when it
flows easily, then again that um

18:38.630 --> 18:41.790
you are allowed to be able to think about
creating.

18:42.619 --> 18:48.520
And that's what the people say, that, you know,
like there is no word for art until there's

18:48.520 --> 18:53.310
just that um sense of everything can be artful.

19:00.900 --> 19:04.050
I remember something that happened several
years ago,

19:04.130 --> 19:06.280
we were, my mother and I were at a museum.

19:07.420 --> 19:14.020
And there was a group of women who was looking
at um my mother's work and my work,

19:14.280 --> 19:17.750
and a woman came up, came up to my mother and
said, um,

19:17.760 --> 19:19.709
your daughter's work is so strange.

19:20.000 --> 19:21.439
Why is it so different?

19:22.219 --> 19:26.099
And my mother, I'd never seen her react so
strongly, she said,

19:26.709 --> 19:32.939
my daughter and I do the same work, and um I
felt

19:33.229 --> 19:39.750
really impressed by that statement because not
only was she defending her daughter like a

19:39.750 --> 19:45.334
lioness defending
her baby cubs, but she was also saying

19:45.334 --> 19:51.614
really something important to me that I really
needed to hear was that we were doing the same

19:51.614 --> 19:58.375
work, that it may be different because of our um
experiences in life and our

19:58.375 --> 19:59.935
times living on this earth.

20:00.680 --> 20:07.510
But that same relationship is there, and I

20:07.510 --> 20:12.010
think that goes back from my mother to her
mother, to her mother,

20:12.079 --> 20:15.839
to her mother, to her mother until you get to
the source that is

20:16.484 --> 20:23.444
um, the clay mother, and I think that's why I
have to go every once in a

20:23.444 --> 20:28.765
while into the mountains to get the clay
because I have to always be reminded of that,

20:29.635 --> 20:31.474
um, that's very essential to me.

21:09.829 --> 21:13.839
The work that I'm doing now is about Los Alamos
and the intersection of the Pueblo world and

21:13.839 --> 21:20.250
the world of the scientists. It started out
with a question I asked about where

21:20.250 --> 21:26.099
in the real world a myth of dramatic
proportions was being reenacted daily.

21:26.099 --> 21:30.369
I looked in my own backyard and
there at Los Alamos it seemed to me that the

21:30.369 --> 21:36.130
myth of the end of the world was being enacted
daily right next door to the Pueblo

21:36.130 --> 21:40.170
where a different kind of myth about the end of
the world was going on because, at least in

21:40.170 --> 21:42.050
Pueblo culture, as I understand it.

21:42.479 --> 21:44.560
There's always some kind of return.

21:44.810 --> 21:49.000
There are certainly myths about the end, but
somebody always crawls out of the hole.

21:49.050 --> 21:52.849
Something grows again and it repeats,
as opposed to

21:52.890 --> 21:57.000
I think, at least in my Judaic,
Germanic, European world,

21:57.250 --> 22:02.170
when it's over, it's over, and I got interested
in those two stories being told side by side.

22:09.339 --> 22:15.849
I think those European Jewish scientists
who were fleeing Europe and fearful for

22:15.849 --> 22:18.810
the world's life thought that Hitler had
the secret to the bomb.

22:18.869 --> 22:20.160
They thought he was going to make it.

22:20.449 --> 22:21.880
They had to make it faster.

22:22.170 --> 22:26.329
I think that Oppenheimer knew some kind of
biblical event had to happen,

22:26.609 --> 22:30.890
something on a very dramatic scale, and those
kind of events happen in the desert.

22:53.449 --> 22:58.229
Montaging is the only way I can really piece
together all these different parts that I'm

22:58.229 --> 23:02.099
dealing with in terms of time, place, and
culture.

23:02.349 --> 23:04.739
All these different things that grip
me.

23:05.030 --> 23:09.670
I have to find a way to lay them all out and look
at them. In the beginning, I wanted to

23:09.670 --> 23:14.030
merge them, and then gradually I've been
deconstructing and piecing.

23:21.900 --> 23:26.569
In this new work you'd think that the Indians
are the intuitives and the scientists are the

23:26.569 --> 23:30.760
intellects, but what I've been really
interested in doing is subverting those notions

23:31.050 --> 23:35.709
and looking at what the scientists do as
rituals, sort of intuitive rituals,

23:35.709 --> 23:41.050
and at the same time looking at the Pueblo
world in terms of the intelligence behind their

23:41.219 --> 23:46.089
functions. I'm working on a piece right
now that's about brains and nature, but very

23:46.089 --> 23:52.650
much picks up on that idea of not letting us
fall into traps of these kinds of, um, color

23:52.650 --> 23:57.170
ways of looking at things that I'm very much
interested in my own life and in the art that I

23:57.170 --> 24:00.319
make, somehow bridging these two extremes.

24:44.630 --> 24:51.329
You know.
That

24:59.250 --> 25:05.829
Don't
hear

25:05.829 --> 25:06.619
more, get more in the.

25:12.510 --> 25:13.390
Hey, hey.

25:29.109 --> 25:29.119
OK.

25:38.300 --> 25:45.280
Gracias.
It's going

25:45.280 --> 25:47.479
on, but it's for.

25:54.109 --> 25:55.790
Linda Rasa.

26:00.010 --> 26:02.280
Yeah, hey hey.

26:13.800 --> 26:19.719
This area is rich in cultural history.
There's been a mixing of many different

26:19.719 --> 26:23.030
cultures, primarily Hispanic and Native American.

26:23.439 --> 26:30.439
The history is based mostly around the Spanish
conquistadores coming in and conquering the

26:30.439 --> 26:32.040
Native American culture.

26:35.979 --> 26:42.900
The painting is titled, um, Who Wins this Game,
and it's a painting of a tic tac

26:42.900 --> 26:48.089
toe game, and each square, uh, it represents a
different label of identity.

26:48.300 --> 26:54.800
Um, there is Mexican American, Spanish American,
there's, um, mestizo,

26:55.500 --> 26:59.569
uh, and so there, there are about nine different
labels where we can fall under or be

26:59.569 --> 27:00.650
categorized under.

27:01.079 --> 27:07.660
And it's about where you fit, and to me I was
looking at it, uh, my identity and wondering, well

27:07.660 --> 27:12.540
where do I fit? Because I've been labeled every
one of these labels, and I didn't know if I was

27:12.540 --> 27:18.459
a Latino, or if I was a Chicano, or if I was a
Mexican American or Spanish American. So, um, the

27:18.459 --> 27:19.550
painting is about.

27:21.020 --> 27:25.739
All of the aspects of what makes me culturally
who I am,

27:25.800 --> 27:29.770
what I, uh, identify with, and I identify
with all of them in the end,

27:30.060 --> 27:31.410
so it's really a game.

27:32.520 --> 27:38.780
To, to find out where you fit, and, and in the
end it doesn't really matter because I arrived

27:38.780 --> 27:41.880
my, my personal statement is that I prefer to be
called mestizo,

27:41.920 --> 27:48.640
which means, uh, mixed heritage, and, and that can
involve anyone, and anyone can relate to that.

27:49.430 --> 27:55.170
On a good day, being the product of two very
different cultures is a strength,

27:55.579 --> 28:02.569
and that's that whole theme today of the
mestiza of creating a space where

28:02.569 --> 28:09.180
you can draw strength and ideas and vitality
from two

28:09.180 --> 28:15.500
different perceptions of life, two different sets
of traditions. On a hard day,

28:15.780 --> 28:20.449
it can be very difficult because there are
conflicting values.

28:21.729 --> 28:24.619
I have spent my entire life in the United
States.

28:24.680 --> 28:31.160
I've been shaped by everything that we are, how
we value precision and order and tidiness,

28:31.719 --> 28:38.449
and yet there is the part of me that grew up in
a very strong Mexican American family that

28:38.449 --> 28:44.050
values personal relationships and traditions,
and there's a lot of conflict that can be part

28:44.050 --> 28:46.689
of that.
I try to see to it that there are more good

28:46.689 --> 28:48.969
There are more good days than bad days, but I don't always succeed.

28:52.439 --> 28:55.939
We are the first of our people to walk this
path.

28:56.599 --> 29:02.869
We move cautiously, unfamiliar with the sounds,
guides for those who follow.

29:04.099 --> 29:08.290
Our people prepared us with gifts from the land,
fire.

29:08.989 --> 29:15.930
Herbs and the song yerbabua soothe us into
mourning rhythms that hum

29:15.930 --> 29:17.050
in our blood.

29:17.540 --> 29:23.859
Abrasos linger round our bodies; cuentos whisper
lessons in Español.

29:25.130 --> 29:27.729
We do not travel alone.

29:28.020 --> 29:31.729
Our people burn deep within us.

29:41.869 --> 29:47.369
You know, the way I usually come to a story is
by, uh, looking at my obsessions,

29:47.699 --> 29:54.099
and this story, Eyes of Zapata, came to me from
my own interest in

29:54.099 --> 29:59.099
photographs of Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican
revolutionary, uh, leader.

29:59.770 --> 30:04.619
So I started with that little thread, just my
own obsession with the eyes of Zapata.

30:04.910 --> 30:08.959
I knew the story would be called Eyes of Zapata,
but I didn't know who would be telling the

30:08.959 --> 30:12.430
story.
And eventually, through my research, I found a

30:12.430 --> 30:18.550
tiny footnote in a biography of Zapata that
mentioned, uh, his wives.

30:18.670 --> 30:25.135
Of course, he had several wives.
And, uh, one of his oldest children is by this woman

30:25.385 --> 30:29.594
who he did not marry.
She was his common law wife; he had children by

30:29.594 --> 30:34.744
her during the time of the Mexican revolution
and during the time that he was married, and if

30:34.744 --> 30:39.305
you look at the dates of her children's birth,
you see that she was a constant in his life.

30:39.625 --> 30:43.974
So I was very intrigued by her, and I decided
to do a little bit of investigation.

30:43.984 --> 30:46.425
But, as always, you never can find any.

30:46.979 --> 30:51.459
History books about Mexican women, their only
entry is that they gave birth to someone or

30:51.459 --> 30:54.410
they were married to someone, and again,
because there was a void,

30:54.660 --> 30:57.449
there's nothing; I have to invent her story.

30:57.739 --> 31:01.699
Who could this woman be who could hold so much
power over such a great man?

31:02.599 --> 31:09.310
And that's where my story took flight when I
tried to create a character that would be the

31:09.310 --> 31:15.500
equal in stature to a great general, being that
she's Indian and poor.

31:16.030 --> 31:20.150
The only option I had was to make her either, uh,
a puta, a whore.

31:21.140 --> 31:25.410
Or a bruja, a witch, and I was much more
interested in a witch.

31:25.900 --> 31:29.979
So I made her into a witch woman, uh, annual.

31:32.839 --> 31:38.030
I rise higher and higher, the house shutting
itself like an eye.

31:38.359 --> 31:43.239
I fly farther than I've ever flown before,
farther than the clouds,

31:43.599 --> 31:49.920
farther than our lord sun, husband of the moon,
till all at once I look beneath me and see our

31:49.920 --> 31:53.839
Lives clear and still, far away and near.

31:54.819 --> 31:58.640
And I see our future and our past, Miliano.

31:58.969 --> 32:03.199
One single thread already lived and nothing to
be done about it.

32:03.770 --> 32:08.979
And I see the face of the man who will betray
you, the place and the hour.

32:09.209 --> 32:16.130
The gift of a horse the color of gold dust, a
breakfast of warm beer swirling in your

32:16.130 --> 32:21.949
belly, the hacienda gates opening, the pretty
bugles doing the honors.

32:22.180 --> 32:23.510
Deli.

32:24.989 --> 32:27.670
Bullets like a sudden shower of stones.

32:28.709 --> 32:35.709
And in that instant, a feeling of relief almost
and loneliness just

32:35.709 --> 32:38.260
like that other loneliness of being born.

32:39.150 --> 32:45.660
And I see my clean weevil and my silk Sunday
shawl, my rosary placed between my

32:45.660 --> 32:49.050
hands and a palm cross that has been blessed.

32:49.420 --> 32:56.369
Eight days people arriving to pray, and on the ninth
day, the cross of lime and sand raised

32:56.579 --> 32:59.949
and my name called out: Ines Alfaro.

33:10.689 --> 33:15.619
I feel that these stories and my retelling them
help to empower.

33:16.410 --> 33:20.890
Chicano women and Mexican women; that it helps
us to look at our past to claim some part of

33:20.890 --> 33:27.530
ourselves and to let go, uh, shame and and
to let go, mm.

33:28.530 --> 33:33.729
Perhaps images of passive and helpless women
and to revise them and to relook at them as

33:33.729 --> 33:40.280
places to empower and liberate us and to rid of
us of detrimental emotions like

33:40.280 --> 33:43.689
shame and exchange them for something like, uh.

33:44.260 --> 33:50.739
Um, sexual energy, sexual power, uh,
willfulness, and to see those as positive

33:50.739 --> 33:54.699
things, not as, uh, um.

33:55.770 --> 33:58.839
Qualities that one might equate with bad women.

34:15.489 --> 34:20.979
I saw my friend Ella with a tall cowboy at the
store the other day in Shiprock.

34:21.409 --> 34:24.639
Later I asked her, who's that guy anyway?

34:25.360 --> 34:29.290
Oh, Lucy, she said, I knew what was coming.

34:29.620 --> 34:31.209
It's terrible.

34:31.459 --> 34:37.979
He lives with me and my money and my car, but
just for a while he's an

34:37.979 --> 34:43.290
airman and rodeos a lot, and I still work.

34:43.820 --> 34:48.979
This rodeo business is getting to me, you know,
and I'm going to leave him.

34:49.500 --> 34:54.969
Because I think all this I'm doing now will pay
off better somewhere else,

34:55.260 --> 35:02.139
but I just stay with him, and it's hard because
he just smiles that

35:02.139 --> 35:09.060
way, you know, and then I end up paying entry
fees and putting shiny Tony

35:09.060 --> 35:11.590
llamas on layaway again.

35:12.399 --> 35:16.739
It's not hard, but he doesn't know when I'll
leave him.

35:16.850 --> 35:23.389
And I'll drive across the flat desert from Red
Valley in blue morning light straight to

35:23.389 --> 35:25.300
Shiprock so easily.

35:25.929 --> 35:32.810
And anyway, my car is already used to humming a
morning song with Gary Stewart.

35:33.429 --> 35:39.530
Complaining again of aching and breaking down
and out love affairs.

35:40.550 --> 35:47.350
Damn, these Navajo cowboys with raising eyes
and pointed boots are

35:47.350 --> 35:53.870
just bad news, but it's so hard to remember
that all the

35:53.870 --> 35:56.949
time, she said with a little laugh.

36:04.239 --> 36:06.989
The desert is no lady.

36:07.790 --> 36:12.540
She screams at the spring sky, dances with her
skirts high,

36:12.750 --> 36:18.620
kicks sand, flings tumbleweeds, digs her nails
into all flesh.

36:18.949 --> 36:22.870
Her unveiled lust fascinates the sun.

36:26.610 --> 36:32.719
"Unrefined" was an early poem in the book
Chance, and I don't really know where that

36:32.719 --> 36:38.719
first line, 'the desert is no lady,' came from, but
it's probably from my notion that the that the

36:38.719 --> 36:45.550
desert is a sensual being, and that's not
in the New Age sense of sensual but

36:45.760 --> 36:52.679
in the more primal or mythic sense of
sensual, that there's a lot of energy in the

36:52.679 --> 36:54.560
desert, the kind of light.

36:55.070 --> 36:58.500
That we see and that sort of infuses us.

36:59.439 --> 37:01.320
So it is untamable.

37:02.600 --> 37:07.540
And for some people, that has all kinds of
sexual connotations. I'm probably very

37:07.540 --> 37:13.129
interested in the sensual connotations of the
desert, its textures,

37:13.459 --> 37:14.699
its colors.

37:15.610 --> 37:20.590
Its surprises, which I suppose have sensual
and sexual connotations.

37:33.770 --> 37:34.770
Yeah.

37:41.750 --> 37:46.939
Having grown up out here, the quality of the
light and the color that we have in our culture

37:46.939 --> 37:52.889
is very brilliant, and when people move to this
area actually from other beautiful places,

37:53.219 --> 37:58.300
they will maybe have painted in a certain style,
so they lived in Carmel when they come here

37:58.300 --> 37:59.300
within a year's time.

37:59.719 --> 38:04.070
All of their colors and everything increase,
the brilliance is there,

38:04.120 --> 38:07.669
the quality of light is there, and it just
affects everything that you do.

38:08.120 --> 38:11.520
Color is very important.
As a child, I really could not draw with color

38:11.520 --> 38:16.709
and then slowly with time it really became a
passion in my own work.

38:17.750 --> 38:24.209
I said I wanted it to really almost hurt your
teeth, that the color was

38:24.209 --> 38:30.919
really very much about relationships and the
passion between those colors.

38:45.149 --> 38:49.989
In my own work, I have a series called Facets
and another one called Basket Dance,

38:50.030 --> 38:55.429
and they're really about the colors of the
sunset and the natural flowers that you see in

38:55.429 --> 38:58.739
this region, and one day I was driving around
thinking, gee,

38:58.750 --> 39:03.629
this orange and turquoise is really a little
intense in a piece that I had done.

39:03.709 --> 39:08.060
But as I drove north, I realized the sunset was
exactly those colors.

39:08.070 --> 39:12.300
So it's there, it's a kind of subliminal
influence always.

39:49.659 --> 39:53.649
All of my work, um, this work as well as
earlier work, is

39:54.020 --> 39:57.459
uh, very much about the body in sort of an
abstract way.

39:57.540 --> 40:01.610
I very seldom work literally, in a figurative
sense.

40:01.979 --> 40:06.219
Uh I can also say that the tin or the metal is
very much a

40:06.354 --> 40:13.304
skin for me, um, it's not only a construction
material but it also refers to the skin of

40:13.304 --> 40:19.715
the body as well as the skin of the earth or
the landscape and even in the painting I always

40:19.715 --> 40:25.665
think of even an oil painting skin, the
traditional painting surface as skin of the

40:25.665 --> 40:29.014
body, and I think a lot of women relate to
their painting that way.

40:36.370 --> 40:43.159
Bitter Harvest uh is one of my more recent
paintings and I think of the

40:43.159 --> 40:50.040
right hand panel again as kind of this intense
field that's uh almost like a

40:50.040 --> 40:55.679
field of blood, again bringing the body and the
earth together and uh so I think of this also

40:55.679 --> 40:58.879
as land that's wounded or violated.

40:59.379 --> 41:05.100
As the earth is being treated basically, the
left hand panel is painted with rubber latex.

41:05.100 --> 41:11.929
Which I literally think of as flesh, so it is
uh like a field or rows upon

41:11.929 --> 41:18.860
rows where the living things have dried out or
dried up and there's nothing there, there's no

41:18.860 --> 41:22.540
life energy, no water to feed this field.

41:56.340 --> 42:00.659
I hear Indian women chanting, chanting.

42:01.659 --> 42:08.120
I see them long ago bribing the desert with
turquoise threads in the silent morning

42:08.120 --> 42:13.989
coolness, kneeling, digging, burying their
offering in the land.

42:14.260 --> 42:16.600
Chanting, chanting.

42:18.040 --> 42:24.709
Guide my hands, Mother, to weave singing birds,
flowers rocking in the wind,

42:25.040 --> 42:30.159
to trap them on my cloth with a web of thin
threads.

42:32.209 --> 42:35.699
Secretly, I scratch a hole in the desert by my
home.

42:36.570 --> 42:40.879
I bury a ballpoint pen and lined yellow paper.

42:42.070 --> 42:47.699
Like the Indians, I ask the land to smile on
me, to croon softly.

42:48.580 --> 42:52.439
To help me catch her music with words.