There always seems to be the “next time” mentality on a trip like our artists’ trip to the southwest. Next time we need to. . . Next time we won’t . . . Next time let’s remember . . . This trip was not an exception. We didn’t make it to Chaco Culture. Next time we need to do that and look through the huge telescope. We didn’t get around to soaking in the hot mineral waters at Pagosa Springs. As stressed as we felt, we should have done that. And we didn’t take the Cumbres Toltec Train ride from Chama. But northern New Mexico had a long deep freeze just as the color was starting and the leaves just dropped. Fall color was very scarce on the road from Pagosa Springs to Taos.
The trip from Pagosa Springs to Taos became a purposeful drive. We did stop in Chama to photograph the railroad and peruse the shops a little while. That’s where we learned about the color. And we did take a side excursion that went different than any of us could possible have known. That has it’s own story. We stopped to photograph the Halfdome of the Rockies and the Rio Grand Gorge bridge.
Somewhere on that road, is a big pink building that at one time was a schoolhouse. It sits alone on a angry barren piece of ground. We may have overlooked it, but we’d had no success for miles in our quest for a restroom. People were becoming crabby. Everyone. The land lay flat and open and it’s hard to hide behind sage brush. We’d stopped twice already to find establishments vacant or closed. Then we saw the big pink building which billed itself as an art museum.
Art museum. Well, we were an artist’s group. An art museum would have art, yes? and bathrooms, yes? We turned in and piled out. It was an eerie place. The sculptures had an attitude. “You think I’m ugly? Come here and I’ll show you ugly!” We picked our way down a little path that wound through belligerent, angry pieces that expressed understandable, yet unsettling sentiment. The religious symbolism was overwhelming. The political symbolism was monstrous. It left me thinking “What did they do to you?” before I even entered the building itself.
All of our number were wide eyed and a little tentative as we entered a huge wooden door that looked like it could keep you in or out at will. Attached to it was a large technically acceptable piece that depicted Adam and Eve being driven from the garden by a sweet looking angel. The ugly anger on their faces accompanied by the explicit sign language expressed by the two toward the enforcing angel shocked the sweet simple sensibilities of the group of artists from Arkansas on a fun inspirational trip. We really just wanted to use the bathroom! Wandering into the large hall, we were assaulted by a body of work both artistically and visually startling, using penetrating colors and lines with every form of perversion to express outrage.
The man who lived there rudely directed us to the bathroom. Upstairs, where the restrooms were, the furnishings were put together as museum pieces and artifacts: their presentation clean and precise. Yet it was obvious that they were in use as well. It added to the eerie intruding aura of the place. References to laws and realtors and developers only hinted at the injustice that had created this huge body of work. I can’t say I understand. I don’t. I have no real knowledge of what made the man so bitter inside and out. Unlike most museums, there was no donation box or plea for support. Glad I could leave, I felt saddened for the prison the man lived in. I could not sleep in that place without being woefully changed.
Heavy in spirit and heart, we got back into our vehicles and continued our drive to Taos. Eventually the pungent distaste we felt would subside leaving us with questions and a memory. A short way down the road was a village built for living independent of commercial utilities: strange looking houses that resembled a variety of crashed space ships. It was like an exhale of relief when I finally settled into the hotel room: cramped, tired, homesick but safe.
Next time, we won’t stop there.
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