Each work in this room is a conversation with the desert—and I invite you to join in this conversation.
How does the desert speak to you? How has this place become you, changed you? Has it grown into you? Or have you grown into it? How do you connect to places, over a short time and over a long time?
What do you feel of the desert? Perhaps it is the seduction of colors by the fiery sunsets that take hold? Violet tinged mountains in the evening light? The coyote’s voice that penetrates your dreams in the earliest darkness of dawn?
I am enamored by the wind …sometimes a soft caress, sometimes a mischievous, dare I say, friend. This friend, full of bluster and nonsense. I often watch the sun-bleached grasses dance with the wind. Luring me deep into this moment, into myself—the desert has a way of getting under my skin. I am, in that moment, TOUCHING GRACE.
Sun-bleached grasses dancing in the wind is a common theme in my work—the desert dressed in blue and gold. The wind, the sky, the horizon. Connections of place, distilled into single words, continue to inspire the space my work creates.
Here, in New Mexico, there is a gentle beauty like none I’ve ever known. The skies, pink with memory …sometimes a soft pillowy pink, sometimes an electric hot pink. This is THE HEAVEN OF MY EARTH …and then there are those cold winter nights, the moon haunting in the pale blue light. The DECEMBER MOON holds me in its reflection, recounting days past and steps forward. This countered by the summer monsoons, when life bursts with a flurry, all inspired in the bounty. It is contagious—I can feel THE MONSOON INSIDE growing, dreams bursting with inspiration and beauty, REACHING ABOVE THE HORIZON, here I am held by the desert’s lure…
Can you recount the moments it had you? Can you tell me, was it the colors, the wind? Is it the vast emptiness at a distance, bursting with life up close? How has it changed you? Become you? Has it grown into you? Or have you grown into it?
- Onna Voellmer
