Returning to the Desert
On distance, devotion, and making art from the landscapes that hold us
desert spring returns
snowmelt river chills my skin
ravens trace the cliffs
I’ve settled my little 1990 travel trailer into the backyard of a dear friend in Moab for the spring. Coming back feels both familiar and surreal, like stepping into a version of my life that never fully let me go. I spent so much of my life here living out of a beat up van that the camper feels natural, I am not built to be indoors.
I’ve been walking the same trails and stretches of slickrock I used to know by heart. Returning to old campsites and secret places I hold dear. I’ve missed the way sunrise spills over the rim, the way evening lays a soft pink alpenglow across the La Sal Mountains.
Some landscapes don’t loosen their hold on you.
This is one of them.
Where the River Takes You
My partner is gone for the season, following the river like he always does. After a long winter of rest, the spring thaw pulls him back into motion, running whitewater, guiding long stretches of remote desert canyon, moving with the river’s current for weeks at a time. Our only communication through brief in-reach texts, 160 character love letters that let me know he is thinking of me.
I’ll see him in brief windows between trips, sometimes just for a few hours, before he disappears again. He won’t fully return home until October.
So this time of year becomes something else for me.
A season of solitude.
I fill it with long days outside. hiking, camping, wandering without much of a plan. I let myself sink deeper into my work. The love of my friends and community is what sustains me while he’s away, keeping an ever looming edge of loneliness at bay.
I have learned how to carry both independence and longing at the same time.
Light, Water, Stone
The mornings are still cold, but the days are stretching longer now, golden and warm, the light lingering just a little more each evening. The desert is waking up: claret cups, globe mallows, Indian paintbrush, yucca. The birds have returned as well.
The river runs with snowmelt, swift and cold enough to steal the breath from my chest. Too chilly to swim in, I slip beneath the surface just long enough to feel alive, my skin stinging and pink from the temperature shift. climbing out i stretch across sun warmed sandstone, like the lizards nearby, letting heat return slowly to my bones.
current around me
will these same waters reach you
carrying my love
Above me, the sky is a perfect blue, scattered with small clouds. Ravens dance overhead, their raspy calls echoing off the canyon walls while their shadows glide along the cliff faces, passing like thoughts.
Time, Collected
I’m often asked what inspires my work….how I get ideas, what things mean, why certain elements return again and again.
My creative practice is deeply rooted in place and time. Most of my work is a collection of moments, days or weeks gathered together into a single piece that feels like a kind of collage of time spent outdoors.
To make work like this, I have to go outside. I walk the same trails over and over, watching how they shift with the seasons, how they’re shaped by weather and time. I learn about the plants and animals who live there, I watch the moon and sun trace their path across the sky.
A lot of it is just existing & watching.
My pieces are rarely planned. I start drawing, and something begins to form. I think about the plants, the animals, my quiet prayers for rain, the way the desert feels in my body, where the moon was in the sky that night, how the stars looked, the colors of the landscape, the wobbly shape of sandstone, the way the heatwaves dance off the baked earth, it all informs my choices.
I’m trying to translate something that isn’t always easy to explain.
(I’m working on a longer post that goes deeper into this process.)
The Oracle
the ever so amazing and talented Faunwood reached out to me about painting one of her little oracle blanks for an upcoming show. I won’t lie, the imposter syndrome hit really hard with this one. I’ve never really painted a mini figure before, and it felt so far outside my wheelhouse.
I ended up having what I thought was a catastrophic failure when I went to prime this little dude and the primer dried super textured and bumpy for some reason. It was not at all what I had planned, I sat on my garage floor crying convinced that I had ruined the whole piece, I was so excited to be in this show and I had blown my chance at it…… 🙃😭
I was holding it in my hands, I realized that the texture felt like sandstone or fired ceramic, It was almost like it was always meant to be that way. It became one of those trust the process moments that doesn’t feel good at all until you’re on the other side of it. I was stressed the entire time, but I’m so grateful I stuck with it. This piece turned into something completely different than I imagined, and honestly, I love it more because of that
Because of You
OH A small note, but one that matters!
In my last newsletter I explained that I was bringing back donations. I’ve committed to donating a portion of my websites sales each quarter to nonprofit organizations. As long as I’m able to financially sustain it, I plan to keep doing it quarterly!
This past quarter, I donated $439 to Friends of the Boundary Waters.
Thank you for being part of that!
I haven’t chosen the next organization yet. I tend to focus on environmental and wilderness nonprofits, especially within the Four Corners region, but I’m always open to suggestions.
Thanks for being here, for reading, for following along with my life and work
More soon.
-Holls