A day or two after the yellow trailer moved I was looking out of the repository over a woodpile to the desert when I realized the pile included driftwood gathered from Lake Abert, Oregon, remnants from a trip which, being broke by the end of summer 1977, I’d financed by pre-selling portfolios of photo and silkscreen prints documenting the annual foray in exchange for gas money up front. The gambit worked so well I was able to gather said wood at the source and range anonymously about southeastern Oregon erecting anomalous driftwood sculptures on dry lakes and promontories for some weeks, all subsequently documented and delivered. Down the years the remaining material became many things; pickup bed liners, home furnishings, now parts of a wall in the Wall Spring studio…
For all that I never dreamed that thirty-eight years later not only would I still have some of the furry salt-bleached stuff but be looking at it from inside a two thousand square foot storage building intended to contain two lifetimes of artworks on the edge of the Smoke Creek Desert…
…let alone that that would be located within a twenty-year old oasis of [mainly] my own making…
So, in brief, bits of oasis, twenty years on, on a few days in June, careening towards the solstice…just add water and wait two decades. The Lake Abert wood, following that 1977 trip, traveled with me through divorce, chaos, heartbreak, hearts broken, addresses and studios too numerous to enumerate, more chaos…ah well…to end, this chapter anyway, a few hundred miles south of its original source…
M
Love the painting juxtaposed with the photo.
Job well done…love the fraktur hut…those gorgeous froggs!…and so much more…………..
One of these days it will be beachfront property!!!
1977, we must have met just after that trip, Mike. Your oasis is looking mighty good and so are the pics.
You’re most likely right…just as I was blindly/blithely careening towards/over that marital cliff…on another subject, here’s what Lee Saloutos has to say about the state of the lake currently;
“Saw your blog post about Lake Abert driftwood .. I think you have the entire world supply of the stuff, it seems. There was nothing along the “shoreline” when I was there last year. The lake itself was barely a puddle, although maybe there is a little more in it now. That was the only one of the “lakes” in the area that had any moisture in it at all. It looked like Goose Lake had not seen water in a decade, and the others around Lake Abert looked the same.”
Linda and I were toying with the idea of going up there on one of our Alturas trips last year, but as it added about 400 miles decided against…seems like it woulda been a big disappointment…
Could get lost in that painting, stunning!
…of course “that” painting got lost in repainting, but is hopefully more better even, now…
That pile of weathered wood would have some good stories to tell, if it could only speak. Your blog and photos tell the tale quite well, but they barely scratch the surface of the depth of deeds and misdeeds, most unknown but some notorious, accumulated from many decades and crossroads you’ve traveled. What a ride….I’m glad to have been along for small parts of it.
Loved all the comments…I am so tired today that I didn’t realize it was a painting and was marveling over the fabulously minimal photo! I think I remember that trip and the life as well. Love that funny ’round’ tree that appears on your horizon.