Timothy Horn’s Medusa
The Kelly Gang just received a splendiferous post-card from our dearly missed Timmy Horn, who’s presently residing in Chimayo, New Mexico.
Knowing that many of you will be keen to know what he’s up to, we thought we’d share excerpts from the email - so that you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Don’t worry about the poo talk – we’d just sent him images from Megsie’s up coming group show at Craft ACT (more of that in good time)….
Those are the most PRIMA faeces I’ve seen in a long time – keep squeezing them out. You are the baddest girl… but didn’t I know that already.
You came very close to Chimayo on your desert princess trek. Española is halfway from Santa Fe to Taos, you the turn off there, and head 8 miles, the terrain changing from dry desert plain to something almost apline in valleys, and rugged canyons leading to soaring mountains. 400 years of hispanic culture (a handful of families keep up the weaving tradition – fabulous stuff and worth every cent – got our eye on a magnificent rug, 18th century Vallero pattern), and before that the Chimayan indians who left the pueblo at Bandelier, and set up camp around 1200. It’s a little bit lawless, has that bandito feeling, but nothing threatening.
Our neighbors Tom (a beautiful landscape painter) and his wife Michelle (a poet who teaches at the local high school in Santa Cruz) took me out on one of their horses today – being a cowboy from wayback (need to get my chaps sent over). We went out into the canyon that backs their property, following an arroyo (dry river that floods with rainfall from the mountains). Headed up along a trail towards the town of Truchas (means Trout) and Trampas (Traps), to the remains of an old Anastasi pueblo, found some remaining shards of pottery. Glorious looking back over the valley, and across the Los Alamos.
New Mexico, Land of Enchantment. It sure is. The whole Santa Fe style thing – eclectic mishmash of Portugese tiles, exotic fabrics, raw timber furniture, Moroccan lamps – I completely get it and feel right at home. We are renting a really nice place – 4 acres of apple, pear, apricot and cherry orchard. Lovely old adobe house with 70’s additions, greenhouse attached for growing things and acts as eco-heating in winter. Studio for Art (he has a book of short stories coming out in October called Blood Pudding, and is in New York hocking the next manuscript), and one for me. So for as long as we’re here, just going to lap it up.
We had some of gringo neighbors over for dinner the other night, a sort of house warming – Tom and Michelle, Sue (who’s lived here since the 60’s, and built several adobe houses, and currently making a gorgeous little casita out facing the canyon), and Jim, woodworker, and gardener, who rocked on up with a mighty fine cluster of garlic. The hispanic community here isn’t exactly “closed” but we’ve been told you do need a “social broker”. That said, we have a compañero in Carlos, the unofficial Mayor of Chimayo, who sometimes grazes his horses in the orchard, and his son, Pete, an electrician, who I got to wire up the old adobe I’m using as a studio. Spent a couple of weeks painting and putting in a new floor – now all set to settle into some new work. The work I started down in Roswell – some large shell forms, I’m putting aside for a little while. Want to get on with some other things.
Have a few projects on the boil. One is a show at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco next year. Heading there on Monday for a meeting about it. More immediate is a show organized by Deborah Hart, curator at the National Gallery in Canberra, at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. They’re shipping over the glass slipper, and trucking down the Jellyfish. That happens in October. It’s a group show with work by 7 artists, including Juan Davila, Tracy Moffat and Fiona Hall. If you’re headed to Sydney, the amber colored Medusa is in a show at the Maritime Museum, opening next week. Would love to get to NY to see Hils show – but not able to at this point. In any case her new work looks soft and sensual, and very beautiful.
Anyway, enough for now. Love reading your regular updates.
- forgot to mention – the daily thunderstorms that rolls down from Golgotha every afternoon, with violet and sometimes violent lightning, and occasionally rain. AND, the hummingbirds. They are hilarious. Different varieties swing by, coming up from Central America, staying for a couple of weeks at a time. They get very territorial over the nectar feeders we’ve put out, and make swooping, dive bombing raids, whirring away on helicoptering wings. Just love’em.
We’ve uploaded Timmy’s sneps and some images of his jellyfush work from last year (…for the benefit our New Zealand friends). Enjoy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasscentralcanberra/sets/72157601188409790/
