If you drive north from Sedona in Arizona for an hour or two through a beautiful lush valley, you will eventually emerge at Flagstaff. This town has a kind of gritty reality about it, Route 66 passes through here as does a railway line and from time to time those seemingly interminable trains, sounding their horns. There may be snow on the ground, some people will be wearing cowboy hats. Here is a good place from which to launch your assault on the Grand Canyon (an hour or so further north) or to visit the Museum of Northern Arizona or the Lowell Observatory . It isn't flash here, it is a university town and feels like it represents the end of something and start of something else. Point your hire car east, stick on the cruise control and another hour and a half or so later having passed no landmarks whatsoever, turn left and head north on one of straightest most featureless roads you'll ever drive. After 60 or 70 miles you will end up in Hopi territory. By the way, when I did this I was faced at one point by a dilemma; a car coming towards me, perhaps half a mile away, was weaving about the road as though it was drunk. I had plenty of time to think about this problem, opting in the first instance, to flash my headlights and pump my horn in the hope of rousing the dosing operator of the other vehicle. After a few seconds I was considering my next move. Fortunately the other car had regained its composure for long enough to satisfy me that I was unlikely to be involved in a head-on collision as plan B involved heading off into the desert roughly perpendicular to the tarmac, coming to rest several tens of yards away, where I would probably have languished in deep sand until rescued by some kind of off road truck. Anyway, the Hopis live in rudimentary settlements and villages on top of escarpments or "mesas". Imagine a run down council estate perched on beachy head but, in your mind's eye, replace any colour (eg sea, white cliffs, grass etc) with mile upon mile of beige......sand and rock.
Unattractive as this may seem, I found it to be very alluring. There is a simplicity and power about the place that is hard comprehend without taking yourself there. The history of the Hopi People,(the word Hopi means peace) tells of their travels throughout the world searching for a place to settle before selecting this desert. Later on their territory became smaller and more isolated as they were surrounded by the more modern minded and aquisitive Navaho. Did you know that there is no alcohol on the Navaho reservations? I checked into a hotel, went for dinner and asked for a beer to accompany my beans. The big Indian lady looked at me like I'd called her mother a terrorist whore; part of the no alcohol thing is aparently to do with the problems that that and other drugs have caused in their communities over the years.
Anyway, I am painting this picture in an attempt to set the scene which leads me not entirely neatly to the work of James Turrell I mentioned in a post featuring a trip to Paris last year. I cannot claim to be an afficionado, however, I know he does appreciate something about the area. He is a pilot and in his DVD "Passages", he tells us about how he spent months flying all over the north west of the states looking for the ideal place to contruct his works. He settled on this area because, although it did not meet the criteria he had set for himself prior to embarking on his search, he felt a "power" which allowed him to experiment with light in a unique way. His work is not about any particular medium but about the manipulation of light itself and the individual's perception of it, about "going inside" as he called it (which is the Hopi way to describe meditation). He creates or uses spaces in the land; craters or Kiva. The viewer, experiencing light in those spaces, is introduced to an aspect of it, not necessarily perceptible elsewhere. "Going into the space is like going into yourself; the light you see reveals yourself". Mr Turrell points out that light from stars, captured in one of his kivas is unique and may have been travelling across space for thousands of years. Perhaps witnessing a small slice of the sky gives it an intensity. Experiencing his work facilitates a connection between the viewer and the cosmos.
Coming soon: (more on) the work of Mark Rothko (trust me, it is relevant).
