CEREMONY FOR BEING WITH RIVER RED PLACE

Reclaimed wood scrap, mineral & carbon pigments site specifically foraged and ground into paint, graphite pencil.

22.5" x 49.5" x .25"

Ceremony for Being With River Red Place ( a translation of the Tewa name for the river that is colonially known as the Chama RIver: 'P'op'įgeh,’) begins with iron oxide, charcoal and calcium carbonate pigments, ground, mixed with river water, and applied to three boards loosely held together with rusted nails, onsite in the desert near Red River Place. The painting came into being as part of a developing relationship between artist Tilke Elkins, and the site. The artist purchased the board for two dollars from neighbor Cecilia Rios, who runs the woodlot near Canyon Road that came into her family in the 1930s, and has remained there because the family has recognized the value of keeping the land in the family despite its outrageously escalated value. The board will be offered for sale, while the pigments will be offered for rent only, for a five to ten year period. The rent money will go to Flowering tree Permaculture Institute, through artist/educator Roxanne Swentzell.

Please contact Tilke at connect@ceremoniedart.org if you’re interested in entering this ceremony as a supporter.

The painting is accompanied by the following text, Ceremony for Being With River Red Place, written by Tilke Elkins.

CEREMONY FOR BEING WITH RIVER RED PLACE

The valley draws you in. Across the wide sage fields stand the cliffs, their familiar bands of purple-yellow-white-pink in a stacked pastel rhythm towering along the edges of your vision. This valley starts wide and gets narrower as it curves, closing around the river, bringing you towards to the rough limestone, tuff, basalt walls and the piles of colored sand. The milky green river is cold. 

You hesitate at the bottom of a tall, particularly vibrantly hued mound of layered earth in purple, pink and green. You wonder, hard, if you should be there, if you should be with that place at all. You wonder if your very presence is a sign of disrespect. You know, from recent conversations with friends, that a lot of blood has been shed in that valley, between people who were there for generations, and between those people and people who arrived from afar by boat and captured and enslaved as many people as they could. You know that the beauty of the place has been seized and culturally broadcasted and dominated by Euro-American artists since the 1930s.

The green sand at the base of the tall mound is warm. You look up at the place where the mound's purple zenith meets the sky. You feel "yes," like an exultation. You climb upwards, carrying the long wooden boards loosely held together with rusty nails, your feet sliding in the sand. You perch at the top, feeling the sand take the shape of your body under you. Your hands find hard rocks within arm's length, hard quartz very different from the sand, scattered on the other slope of the mound. One large, and flat -- another, round, and flattish on one side. You pile pink sand on the flat rock and pour river water from a plastic bottle you found by the river onto the sand pile. The pink pile deepens to a red. You place the round rock with the flat side on the wet red pile and begin to grind. You press your finger into the smooth wet ground sand and wipe the soft, colored mud on the back of your left hand. It dries quickly in the sun-heated air, turning from dark red back to a pink that makes your skin look yellower. You do it again, this time rubbing in a circle, rubbing a series of circles on the back of your hand. 

You have brought a pencil and a paintbrush with you, in your shirt pocket. You take out the pencil, and begin to draw circles on the piece of wood. Big circles first, following each other in the arc that the circle of the green river takes. Then more circles, all sizes, filling around the river in shapes that feel like the undulations of the land and the cliffs. You make lines between all the circles. When the drawing is done, you turn back to the ground sand, which has dried. You put your pencil back in your pocket and take out your paintbrush. You rewet it, and begin to paint, crosslegged in the sand with the board on your lap, bending over. When the paint is gone, you stand up and walk-sink back down to the base of the mound. You bring a small handful of green sand back up with you, and grind it soft. As you grind, you notice dark clouds pushing, in the distance, over one side of the valley. You wonder if you will have to leave.

Small gusts of wind lift the edges of your clothes as the dark clouds get closer. Sand scatters over one corner of one of the boards. Soon you can see the pendulous white sheets of rain hanging down from the dark distant clouds. You marvel at the illusion of motionlessness that the hanging white sheets give, knowing the furious activity of raindrops actually going on in there. Soon, the edge of the storm is almost directly above you. But the wind does not pick up. You stay dry. You watch the lower landscape darken with an inrush of water.

Some people close to you who have been out walking are hidden from view, making reverent sounds that echo off the high cliff walls. You feel a collective being-with. You feel a joy from the land. You feel a kind of relief in your presence, like a nourishment after thirst. You keep painting, grinding, painting.

When you leave the valley, you drive out towards the clouds and the wet land. From a high place, you can look down and see that the green river is stained deep red. The red of the land has run into it. Above the river, against the still black-dark clouds, hangs the most dramatic quadruple rainbow you have ever seen, irreplaceable in words or image. It is a rainbow of comic proportions. No one says anything. You just roll the windows down, breathe in the wet air, and let the bright shape of the rainbow place itself, upside-down, on the dark fiber of your retinas.