Symbiotic tensions

The recent Jackrabbit Homestead listening event at the 29 Palms Historical Society on March 28, 2009, included talks given by two homestead devotees, cultural geographer Jacob Sowers and myself, Chris Carraher, Wonder Valley resident and artist.  The JRHS Website now includes the text of the talk I gave as well as an essay by Jacob.

Jacob Sowers, an assistant professor at Missouri State University’s Geography, Geology, and Planning program, writes, “When I first encountered Wonder Valley, I felt that it was on the edge of civilization. After participating in everyday life and speaking to numerous residents, however, I have found that Wonder Valley is actually an overlap of conflicting types of place identity held in a complex tension.”   His essay, Wonder Valley: Place and Paradox, is based on his dissertation research, Symbiotic Tensions of Wonder Valley, California: The creation, maintenance, and unpredictability of an Existential Ecotone and discusses the cultural geography of Wonder Valley landscape.

Over the next decade as I traveled to other communities both foreign and domestic for both study and pleasure, I came to realize that Wonder Valley’s place identity had yet to be duplicated.  At first glance, Wonder Valley’s landscape looked disarrayed and chaotic but many times I have found that at first glance our eyes deceive us. Although the Wonder Valley was indeed unusual, over time I began to recognize that this supposedly chaotic place did have an unexplained order. This place is unusual not because of its disorder, which can be expected in a rural desert landscape. Rather, Wonder Valley is unusual and thus a place of interest because it presents some type of order where one would more likely expect chaos—the desert is the ultimate manifestation of empty space, and thus many times portrayed as the antithesis of place and dwelling.

You may read the rest of Jacob’s essay here; downloadable audio of Jacob can be found on the JRHS Website in the Stories and Audio Tour sections. 

My own talk on the 28th discussed the homesteads as addressed through my artwork.   Like Jacob, I also examine Wonder Valley as unexpected community in this passage:

The name of this particular piece is Small-Tract Homestead Act; cabins; full moon; deed to my home [above].  This is a sort of schematic night scene in ink of a full moon over a horizon, and laid over is a grid in vermilion ink scattered with small cabin icons—not unlike the cabin we saw earlier.  With this piece we’re no longer viewing the homesteads as isolated objects but rather in relation to one another, as well as in relation to the desert in which they lie.  And there is tension in the relationships.  An artificial, right-angled grid has been imposed over an unsuitable landscape.  But at the same time the grid ties us all together, wilderness, empty cabins, habited cabins.  The piece holds my own sense of unease at my participation, yet nevertheless acceptance of my condition—this is my home, and my community. 

The full text of my talk, Home:  Finding Our Place,  is on the JRHS Website here; I’m also included in downloadable audio  in the Stories and Audio Tour sections.