Petrified Forest Residency, Day 7, October 2, 2010

The good news is that I painted the rusting car, which sits at the Route 66 stopping point on the PF drive, and it was fun. The other good news is that we had a desert thunderstorm all around us tonight and saw gorgeous clouds, a tad of rain, and smelt the sage as it was crushed a bit by the storm. The bad news is that the second painting of the day is pretty bad. The Navajo would say the universe was in balance.

The old car painting went far more easily than I had expected.  I painted it in the early morning and had a fair bit of  tourist traffic stop by. At one point it occurred to me that for most of the people I saw, the old car and Route 66 had about as much meaning as if it were an interpretive point on the Santa Fé Trail. And in fact, while the Indian history artifacts don’t tell us much more than this was an important trading center around 1250 — 1300, written history records many important roads in just this area: a survey party of eastern whites came down Lithodendron Wash (just under the hill beyond where I was painting) about 1853. The Beale Wagon Road was an important military highway in the mid and late 1800’s.The railroad surveyors and the railroad itself arrived in the 1880’s. The National Old Trails Road came through not long after that and by 1927 Route 66 (unpaved for a while), from Chicago to Los Angeles, “America’s Main Street” (if you lived west of Chicago) opened up. Interstate 40, which lies just beyond the line of  telephone poles where the relic of Route 66 is exhibited, was begun in 1960 and finished in 1984, although many parts of it, particularly in the east where the PF is located, were finished prior to that later date.

Route 66 Came Through Here, 12 x 12″, oil on masonite, 2010

The painting (at least the background)  isn’t as washed out as the photo presents it, although painting in the desert does distort one’s vision in unexpected ways. Titanium white, for example, looks absolutely blue in this sun, so it’s very difficult to know whether what one paints will look like what one sees.

Here’s a photo of the old remains of Route 66 following the line of telephone poles.

The importance of Route 66 to the history of the Petrified Forest can’t be underestimated. It brought tourists by the car loads, adding greatly to the numbers of people tramping through the desert, and added to the collection and sometimes destruction of the Indian relics as well as further theft of the petrified wood. However, personally I like to imagine that my uncle and his family, when the factory he worked on went on strike, came out west via Route 66 in the 1940’s. I have no idea if this is the road they traveled, but it’s fun to think it might be.

By midafternoon, after I had returned to the apartment, the sky all around the area started piling up beautiful clouds. I took tons of cloud photos, but will record just one here. There is an irony about a Portlander getting excited by rain clouds, but life is full of wondrous ironies, all there just for our enjoyment:

I remained in the northern PF complex this afternoon to paint the visitor’s center, which was designed by architect Richard Neutra. Neutra was renowned for his international modernism, and for working closely with clients to provide them with what they needed. He did extensive research for the Petrified Forest buildings, built in the late 1960’s, and attempted to imitate what he thought was Puebloan style. But clearly, it is high modernism, with flat roofs, flat windows, and few decorative elements. His research left out some important items, like the nature of the wind in the area (one wag said the Petrified Forest has four windy seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall). Now a debate is brewing over whether or not the modifications made to the building to account for elements Neutra ignored or was ignorant of should be removed and the buildings returned to their original 1960’s state.  There are arguments to be made on all sides. All I did was try to paint it.

Courtyard, Northern Vistor’s Center, Petrified Forest National Park, (First draft) 12 x 12 “, oil on  masonite, 2010

This is a painting that will almost certainly be scraped and started again. I may even resort to a photograph to get the elements more closely tied to reality.

However bad the painting, I would note that  some of the Neutra designs are elegantly conceived and work well for visitors — the public courtyard is one that, while modified in its plantings and having some sculptures and a pool added, retains a feeling of openness while providing some relief from the wind and sun. Neutra devised courtyards for the private dwelling areas as well as walling the private spaces off a bit from the public ones, so the staff and employees could retain lives separate from their employment. I find this bit of cultural history as fascinating as that of the Puerco Pueblo and will be watching to see how it develops in the future.

So today was a day of recent history paintings as well as embracing the desert skies full of clouds.  I am planning to spend tomorrow in the  “studio,” studio in this case being a lovely shaded back patio and walled yard, with a picnic table. There I think I will be able to scrape off the really bad paintings, fix the mediocre ones, and cheer on the best. I will also be able to lay out my putative presentation and see what else needs doing during the next five days, which is about what we’ll have left in our stay. It will be a full day. But I’m not getting up at 5:30 AM — I don’t need that much fullness.

Reported from Apartment K, Petrified Forest National Park, October 2, 2010 –June