On Place, Belonging, Relations, and Land
By Avi Farber
Every morning at four, just before the sun begins to climb from behind the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a wave of cold wind blows across the sage flats.
The dogs bark, a rooster calls, the rough hewn beams above the kiln creek, and my shoulders pull tight as I zip my canvas jacket up just a little bit tighter. This is the place I found a community—where I have come to refuge.
I pull my truck to the side of the road just north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. The hills here are full of clay—layers of deep purple, red, green, and black earth that move with the sun. Geologic paintings so beautiful that you feel them in your chest when you walk through the belly of their canyons.
They call this O’Keefe country because the famous painter Georgia O’Keefe was fond of painting this enchanting place. Before that, probably God’s country, Spain’s claim to the new world and lost cities of gold. Someone always wants to own it, easily forgetting the Jicarilla Apache, Pueblo’s, Comanche, and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ pʉ̱ Ute that have dwelled here for thousands of years.
And now I am here, nauseous from a diesel exhaust leak. The occasional car blows by on the state highway wondering what I’m doing. I don’t stop until the springs on my old Ford have started to sag, not yet fully aware that this clay is a gift.
The road cuts the hillside and exposes earth that was once the bottom of a lake, dinosaur critters and probably algae was once here. I don’t know how old this stuff is. Decomposed plants and time have compressed these creatures into clay that will take on new life now that my hands have pulled this fresh from the earth and driven it back to my studio.
Inside the thirty foot long anagama kiln dug into a berm of chocolate dirt and volcanic boulders, seven hundred pieces of pottery are being transformed by the fire. As I stoke, ash from the wood falls onto the wares like snow on a boulder in a scree field.
Over the next five days, the heat of the kiln melts the ash into a glaze. The pots share a distinct organic beauty only achieved through firing with wood, this process holds a deep magic. By the end of the firing, you’ll find me and six artists strewn around the kiln exhausted in the sand.
Tired. Happy. Soon to be drunk.
We value this connection more than anything.
We come here to work with fire.
