This post is a continuation from the August 27th post, Living in the Shadow of a National Park.
I have lived a lot of my life near the four corners in the USA.* I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico and three years ago I felt like I moved home again when I landed in southwestern Colorado, just a couple hours north of Gallup. The landscapes in this part of the world are horizon and mountains and sand and rock. And these things influence the way I make art. How could they not since they have so heavily influenced who I am?
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
The Emergence series of tapestries I wove from 2009 to 2018 were based on petroglyphs that surrounded my rented home north of Española, NM. The spiral motif was a form I enjoyed using because of all the questions it seems to evoke. But I also loved that the images pecked into those rocks were made by someone hundreds of year before.** What were their stories?
Part of living in Northern New Mexico (and now southwestern Colorado) is the wide open horizon. No place feels quite as soul openingly raw as Chaco Canyon, a National Park about halfway between where I grew up in Gallup and where I lived for many years in small towns near Española and in Santa Fe.
The fifth piece in the Emergence series was subtitled The Center Place. This is the only piece in this series that I didn’t sell. I think all artwork labled “courtesy of the artist” or “in the collection of the artist” are the pieces they either loved the best or had some emotional reason they couldn’t let go of and that was true of this piece for me. This tapestry was about the place that is Chaco Canyon, its buttes and washes and constructed walls and mesa tops.
Rebecca Mezoff, Emergence V: The Center Place, 45 × 45 inches, hand-dyed wool tapestry, cotton warp, collection of the artist; photo: Gregory Case
I wove it after my teacher James Koehler passed away unexpectedly in 2011, but it isn’t really about him. His death was a marker of when I had to go my own way. His death made me question what I was doing with my art and my health care career in part just because he was only 58, a reminder that we never know how much time we have. The tapestry is about the place that is Chaco Canyon and all its ancient mysteries and geography but also about finding my own way as a tapestry artist and teacher. It also happened that I was headed to Chaco Canyon on March 4, 2011 when I got the news that James had passed away.
Exploring Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon
Chaco Canyon is a mysterious place. If you go there and spend any time among the dwellings, maybe you’ll wonder what happened. Maybe you’ll read some books about archaeology and marvel at the way scientists try to guess. Maybe you’ll read some books by present day descendants of those people or if you’re lucky, get to talk to them, and try to understand the deep history that has been buried in this country by colonialism and genocide. Or maybe you are one of those native people and you know the stories personally.
Chaco Canyon is a place where the canyon feels smaller than expected and the dwellings larger than life in a pretty inhospitable place. The great house in the tapestry on the bottom left is Pueblo Alto. To get there as a tourist you have to climb up a slot in the rock and hike a few miles across the mesa. The wish to walk along the old Chacoan roads tugs at the corners of your mind a little bit but you settle for depictions in the books you find at the visitors center that maybe you’ve taken back to your campsite to look at while covered with sand huddled in your sleeping bag… your water bottle frozen beside you because it is March.***
The mysteries of Chaco Canyon continue.
View from the South Mesa and Tsin Kletzin to give you an idea of the landscape
There is something about turning experiences in a landscape of rock and horizon and sun into the softness of fiber art. One thing I appreciated about my photographer was the way he lit my pieces so that you could see the texture of the weaving. You can almost feel it in that detail, can’t you? Unfortunately he is no longer doing fiber art photography and I haven’t found a good replacement. I think I’ll have to learn to do a better job myself.
Detail of Emergence V: The Center Place; photo: Gregory Case
Elk at sunset in Chaco Canyon during a 2024 visit
Mesa Verde is connected to Chaco and the same peoples lived both places in different eras. That Chacoan road north of Chaco might have taken me right to where I live now in Montezuma County, Colorado.
My current work still plays with thoughts about horizon and time. I’m always wondering about the geological record and what happened over the last 4 billion years. And I marvel at how rocks can tell us something about that if we speak their language. And I hold my breath as the magnitude of how badly humans have broken the climate cycle show up daily.
Let’s work together. The one species who could cause this climate change devastation can be the only one to reverse it. It has to be now. Speak up for your public lands. Give a shit about renewable energy. Care about your neighbors and become part of your local community. Life isn’t about making more money. This is the only planet we have and it is one whole ecosystem. Humans think we live in little boxes, but we’re all related as inhabitants of this big blue marble.
Sunset from Mesa Verde National Park overlooking Montezuma County and Cortez, Colorado, and Ute Mountain.
*The four corners is the place where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet. You can go there and stand in all four states at once if you want to!
**And in at least one instance, over 1,000 years before. If you’re interested in petroglyphs, take a look at Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project. This is where I lived for three years.
***One of the challenges of visiting Chaco Canyon is that there is no place to stay nearby. The gravel road into the park is 20 miles long and frankly, pretty bad. A passenger car can totally do it but it’ll take awhile. There is one campground in the park and so if you want to stay more than one day, that is your best choice. Even in March.