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Thursday, March 18, 2010
Exhibit Highlights Weird Beauty of Clutter
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
Inveterate open-space walkers know there's some weird stuff out there amid the chamisa and the cottonwoods and the pines.
In Bernalillo County's bosque, it's not unusual to stumble across evidence of a homeless camp in the brambles. For some reason, the foothills seem to attract car parts. And, on the mesas, bullet-riddled everything competes with Mother Nature's gifts.
Depending on the walker's mood, these objects are charming surprises or maddening examples of exactly what we seek open space to escape from.
If you take a trip to the city of Albuquerque's Open Space Visitor Center before the end of April and check out its gallery of collected found objects, be prepared for both of those emotions and a few more.
If you like rusted old junk, you will have hit the jackpot. Inside the stunning building that perches on the Rio Grande bosque's west side is a collection of detritus collected from the 30,000 acres of open space managed by the city.
A cast-iron brake drum retrieved from the foothills near Interstate 40. Immaculate brass binoculars, circa 1880-1920, rescued from Calabacillas Arroyo. A bottle of long-gone Hub City soda ("Pop With Personality") that somehow survived the turn of many seasons in the bosque.
The hundred or so things in the "Lost (And Found) in Open Space" show represent just a fleck of the trash that's been hauled out of the foothills, river forest and mesas. The open space exists in reaction to the hordes of people who live in the middle Rio Grande Valley, so it's not surprising that it gets its share of dropped, dumped and discarded stuff.
A Barbie doll head with sad burned hair. An old tin cup. A rusted ax head found discarded at the foot of a tree stump.
The people who maintain open space — employees and volunteers — clean up a lot of debris left by man. Most of it goes into the trash. But some of it is so beautiful or odd that it winds up sitting in the corner of someone's office or stashed in his or her garage.
An Oldsmobile nameplate. A red wooden yo-yo. An ammo belt. An old pistol.
"You pull something out of the earth that is a symbol of a certain time, a perfect relic from the period, and it just kind of speaks to you," the city's open-space center coordinator, Joshua Willis tells me. "My office is full of it."
Willis specializes in collecting things that have been shot at.
The exhibit includes a rusted tractor seat and a rusted bucket used for target practice that Willis found on the West Mesa, as well as a stainless serving dish and the hubcap from a Ford F-150, pocked by more than a few crack shots, that he found in the Petroglyphs.
Metal objects have a magnetic pull for people with guns (ping!), and signs are especially irresistible.
Willis has included in the exhibit a large, official sign that reads SHOOTING OF FIREARMS STRICTLY PROHIBITED IN THIS AREA BY CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE that is spectacularly riddled with bullet holes.
Many of the objects harken back to our agrarian past and reveal our more modern automotive obsessions.
There are six rusted old shovels, their handles worn to driftwood, and part of a harness from a horse-pulled plow, along with hubcaps, a clutch plate, a 1955 New Mexico license plate, a brake drum and an intact door from a 1930s pickup, rusted, of course, and shot through with 18 bullet holes.
The odd among the oddities: An ironing board, the shell of a huge African tortoise and a hobo pack made from a cottonwood stick, a broken badminton racket and a canvas basmati rice bag.
"I think what these stories tell is our desire as people to seek out these open space properties," Willis says, "to walk or hike or shoot unfettered, without boundaries. We're all seeking the same thing, which is the solace of open space."
The exhibit reveals that beautiful things happen in our shared open space. The lovely grave marker of "Spark, 1985-1996" is included, along with an elegant carved cross in memory of "GEL" and a memorial pulled from the Sandia foothills that consists of two blue Rossignol skis, crossed and tied together, with a poem, "The Snow Storm," painted on a piece of weathered wood.
The exhibit also reminds us that unhappy — or at least unusual — things occur in places where people go to get away.
There's this memo from 2004: "Don reports that he found a cardboard box at Piedra Lisa today. Inside was a gutted rabbit (guts were in the box) with a yellow rose. Nearby was a pair of white men's socks. Don't know if the socks were related to the rabbit, but Don thought he'd report them anyway."
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com.
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