Rural Public Arts: Vernacular Materials, Landscape, and Time

Abstract

This article explores the role of vernacular materials in public arts installations that express particular qualities of light, landscape, and time in rural landscapes. The incorporation of light –“natural,” analogue, or digital – is a common strategy to grab or focus attention in public art projects today. These projects can tend to be flashy (literally) or “high-tech”; however, it is not these types of installations that will be examined here. Rather, I am looking at instances where mundane and vernacular materials are used to capture specific qualities and experiences intrinsic to a local landscape. Important to such works is that they engage local as well as “visiting” publics, and they make possible intimate and strangely profound experiences in expansive landscapes. In this article I will discuss one project, the Glass Garden, in Golden, New Mexico, which is on the Turquoise Trail, part way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.