soCurio | art is for everyone

Most of my photographic art cannot be duplicated. I'm not talking about the fact that each artist's style is unique. It's true, that cannot be duplicated. But this goes beyond that. I don't photograph the world-famous. Here you won't find photo art from Monument Park, Yosemite, Soquoia and other sites that have been raped of their spirit. In the vast chasms of Southwest beauty I don't spend time shooting scenic routes and tourists parks. I roam the wonders of my own world of northern New Mexico and the Southwest regions surrounding me. Another photographer simply couldn't find most of the places I shoot. I need my 4X4 to get to the places where my camera and I spend time. Though there remains hardly a spot on earth unmapped by man, there is still undiscovered territory all around us, especially in the American Southwest -- a place that holds vast, yawning chasms of unplumbed wisdom, alive with its spirit still speaking, captured by my camera. This is what my photo art depicts. The raw beauty that 99% of humanity will never see with their own eyes. Rural subjects in the Southwest are very different than elsewhere in the United States. We are the last true American frontier; with a gritty purity born of living close to the land. The American Southwest continually draws awe and interest worldwide. Beginning in 1996 I lived in rural New Mexico's Madrid/Cerillos area without water, electricity or plumbing, hauling water by hand, the only light the kerosene lamp, with no phones as cell phones don't work in the "dead zones" I occupy, past and present. I spent those years roaming the mountains, sometimes sleeping on the ground under the vast, crystal expanse of southwestern skies; sometimes in my van. When at home in my 27-foot trailer with no conveniences of any kind, (even my outhouse had no walls) I spent my days on the land, which tried and tested me. But that was not only OK, it was good, because the locals informed me, "Whom the land calls the land tests." I'd been called home. All was good. In 2001 I moved to an even more remote sector with my dogs, into a tiny log cabin in the foothill forests of the San Pedro Wilderness area, getting snowed in for most of every winter, but now with the luxury of "water pouring right out the wall when you turn the knob!" Locals say I have "paid her dues to the land," but I still spend my time roaming the majestic mountains of northern New Mexico to know them more intimately. Locals of many generations can't recognize where most of my landscapes were taken, though they are "in our own backyard." It is my hope that my photographic art reflects that spiritual intimacy.