Notes from the Mesa

NOTES FROM THE MESA
Taos, New Mexico, 2018

Today I made a series of cyanotypes from the bus. There is no running water here which made for quite a challenge. I powered up the printer through my car to make a digital negative and prayed I would not lose battery power on my computer. I get very little time to work from the laptop as there is a problem with my charger which must be ever-so-delicately placed to make a connection. It seems so sensitive that if I were to breathe too deeply the cord might disconnect.

I don’t attempt to charge my laptop in the car through the night, as temperatures drop into the single digits or teens. I keep the computer inside with me on the bus where it’s a bit warmer thanks to a wood stove (the flue may be broken, as smoke fills the room each time I stoke the fire). Despite the effort, I know it must still be hovering around freezing inside because when I change my urine bucket in the morning, there is a skin of ice floating on top. Now I know to expect that, but it was quite a disturbing discovery after my first night sleeping on the bus, especially since I hadn’t yet figured out a way to keep a fire burning through the night. It dropped to 9º that first night and I buried my head beneath blankets when I touched the tip of my nose to find there was no feeling.

Thanks to the Dallas workshop, I traveled with glass and a board to clamp together as a make-shift contact frame. I propped this up in the dead branches of a scrubby bush. Exposures are fast here, beneath the desert sun. The prints were washed much like I’ve been bathing myself this week, from a bowl of water I fill from jugs or a large thermos. Afterward, I clipped the prints to a clothesline to dry, but the wind was strong. I ended up having better luck taping my series to the side of the bus and will try to flatten the prints beneath a stack of books or any other heavy objects I can find.

I encounter hurdle after hurdle here, but it’s a very fulfilling process.