Untitled (Colorado River Series)

Untitled (Roberta Blackgoat Series)

Drawings

Weaver Mountains from Canyon de Chelly

Prints

ART

Untitled (Colorado River Series)

These photographs were taken in 2008 while Ben was documenting physical, human-induced changes along the Colorado River in accordance with growing water needs of the nation. All of Ben's recent photographs have been taken with a digital camera.

Untitled (Roberta Blackgoat Series)

by BEN KIRKBY

About Roberta Blackgoat
Born in 1918, Roberta Blackgoat was a traditional Navajo woman, living on the reservation in Northeastern Arizona throughout her life. In the 1970s, the Navajo protested the mining of coal by the American government on their lands. In response, the government redrew reservation lines such that the coal would be on Hopi lands; the Hopi were not resistant to mining. After the lines were redrawn, 15,000 Navajo and Hopi were forcibly relocated from their homes. This caused considerable conflict with Navajo tradition and thus some families stayed in protest. Roberta stayed and continued to live her traditional way of life there, as a sheepherder. Until her death in 2002, Roberta was at the forefront of movement to have her lands returned to her people.

Drawings

by ELLEN McMAHON

Weaver Mountains from Canyon de Chelly: A Geographic Impossibility

by JAY DUSARD

"Even on the clearest of days you can't see the Weavers from de Chelly. They are about 230 miles apart, as the condor flies. Astronauts can see them both at the same time, but the angle of view is radically different. This geographic impossibility was created in the darkroom using two negatives, two enlargers, careful registration, and precision bleaching in the narrow 'blend zone' between the component images."

This was published in the Spring issue of Living Cowboy Ethics: The Journal of the Paragon Foundation.

Prints

by SARAH ZIDONIK

A Statement from the Artist
In my work I am grappling with the idea of helping people and at the same time feeling helpless in this desire. No matter what one does to alleviate human suffering, it will persist. My role as an artist is to address this conflict in order to provide a larger understanding and peace with this struggle.

Netting has provided an important symbol in much of my work. Mosquito netting in many parts of the world can provide a temporary and life-saving sanctuary. Netting can also be seen as a trap or uncomfortable enclosure, perhaps reflecting on an overprotective obsession. Still, it is porous, ephemeral, and delicate. I use nets to interact with figures in various ways reflecting these ideas. Often netting will act as a landscape in which figures reside, creating a kind of foundation for them. At other times nets encroach on the figures themselves, sometimes blanketing them in a comforting manner, and other times barely brushing a figure’s hands. In other work the net acts as the filling for cocoons in which figures are resting (or are trapped).

Along with symbols of protection and enclosures, I also investigate transitional spaces. What happens when one leaves a protective space? What happens when a baby leaves the protection of a mother’s womb? What happens when a person dies? The movements in and between life create a background for my motivation to heal.