Act 1
We are not going anywhere near South Dakota but ‘Badlands’ is my favorite movie. Being on the road in America i have been thinking a lot about movies and books that use the road and the landscape as a prominent character in the narrative.
“Little did I realise that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana.”
“My Mother dies of pneumonia when I was just a kid. My Father kept their wedding cake int he freezer for ten whole years. After the funeral he gave it to the yard man. He tried to act cheerful but he could never be consoled by the little stranger he found in his house. Then one day hoping to begin a new life away from the scene of all these memories he moved us from Texas to Port Dupree, South Dakota.”
“We planned a huge network of tunnels under the forrest floor, and our first order of business every morning was to decide on a new pathway for the day.”
“We hid out in the wilderness down by a river in the grove of Cotton Woods. Being the flood season we built our house in the trees.” 
“My girl Holly and I decided to kill ourselves. The same way I did her Daddy. Big decision, you know. Uh, the reasons are obvious. I don’t have time to go into right now. But, one thing though, he was provoking me when I popped him. Well that’s what it was like. Pop. I’m sorry. I mean, nobody’s coming out of this thing happy. Especially not us. I can’t deny we’ve had fun though.”
“Then sure enough Dad found out I been running around behind his back. He was madder than I ever seen him. His punishment for deceiving him: he went and shot my dog. He made me take extra music lessons everyday after school, and wait there ’till he came to pick me up. He said that if the piano didn’t keep me off the streets, maybe the clarinet would. “
“He needed me now more than ever, but something had come between us. I’d stopped even paying attention to him. Instead I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of mouth where nobody could read them.” 
The integratron was a great find in the middle of the Californian desert on our way to Joshua Tree. It was made by this guy who said he had an epiphany to build a time machine to make contact with aliens. He didn’t quite make a time machine but he did end up building the Integratron. The place he chose to build the Integratron was based on the energy of this place in the desert.
Inside the Integratron you can book in to have a sound bath, which will apparently revitalise your mind and body. We arrived too late to book in for a sound bath and it has been a great regret for me on this trip. Oh well, that makes one more reason to come back to America.
The romanticism of the desert and the association with alien contact in the desert is fascinating. The desert definitely has an energy that one could choose to associate with the mystical; I feel that in the desert. But I am lost to try and find a means to understand an association with aliens, particularly; them wanting to hang out there. Perhaps I need a dose of acid to better understand why an alien life form would chose to hang out in the Californian desert.
Which brings me to Joshua Tree, a most excellent place to rest your head after swimming in a motel pool and enjoying dinner at the one tavern in town. We arrived late into Joshua Tree for the first night of out long journey across the continent.
This is where aliens in the desert make another appearance. We checked out the motel Gram Parsons died in (like proper tourists) and after deciding that staying there was too expensive, moved onto a less glamorous motel down the road. Gram Parsons had a fixation (acid based) on finding aliens in the desert, which he failed (I think) to do before he died. I had a bit of a look for aliens in the Joshua Tree national park (acid free) for Gram but I think the trail was cold.
The desert was really mind blowing though, I think I could easily spend a large amount of time living in Joshua Tree and trying to really thoroughly explore the desert for signs of aliens. My travel companions suggested that this might happen after seeing this sign and deciding that it was my ‘destiny’. Which checks out fine with me, being the ‘Art queen’ of Joshua Tree would be the best. Only I think I would probably need to switch to making mosaics and hand painted gift cards.
Another example of how the desert inspires. This sculpture was carved out of a block of wood. Why does it have a face? What is it? Why is ‘it’ smoking? Perhaps the desert aliens have the answers to these mysteries.
First attraction on the road trip agenda was ‘Pioneer Town’, just a few hours outside of LA and positioned appropriately between heat reflecting rocks and sand ( I feel that the weather/ environment will probably get quite a few mentions seeing as my skin is see through and Red hair coupled with Californian desert are far from a match made in heaven). ‘Pioneer Town’ is basically just a big set of a… pioneer town and has been used in a bunch movies. It was what you would expect, a western set that made you feel like you were on a movie set except everybody else in the cast and crew of the movie had an RDO that day or they changed locations and didn’t tell you.
But it is in ‘Pioneer Town’ that i fell in love with what i will call ‘Naturally Occurring Desert Sculptures’ or ‘NODS’ which is the appropriate acronym for this name. These ‘NODS’ are part junk piles, part shrine/ eyesore. The one depicted above is from the front garden of a house about five seconds walk from the end of the “Pioneer Town’ set and whilst this particular ‘NODS’ was outlined in rocks there were the beginnings of many other ‘NODS’ around it. One consisted of a row of rusting type writers and school desks whilst the other was comprised entirely of broken ceramic animals and plates.
There really only seem to be a few basic rules when it comes to constructing a ‘NODS’ and they are
1. Get some trash. Ceramic and plastic preferred, if it is broken already, great, if not, break it a bit or add another piece of broken trash to it. You could use a dolls head or a plastic sandal with the sole snapped off for example, but please, don’t just stick to my examples, let your imagination roam…
2. Arrange it in the desert, perhaps around a scarce plant or tumbleweed, if there is already a piece of junk in the desert start there, it could be an old Tyre or a wheel barrow or even the burnt out body of a car.
3. If any of the objects in your trash collection have faces or writing on them make sure that they are prominent amongst the setting and perhaps arrange them so that their proximity could tell a story or indicate that the viewer should be invited to create meaning from the composition.
Further studies listed below.
"Drinking in LA"
I have arrived in LA for the start of my epic American road trip. On this trip I will be looking for an art project that has yet to reveal itself to me. This trip is part of a travel scholarship I received two years ago and the first of a very large project in which I will visit countries to undertake research and residencies to make new works. I will be undertaking these trips to countries in alphabetical order. This is why the first stop is A for America.
So far there have been no signs of art projects in LA, this could be due to A. Jet lag and B. LA is super weird (or at least what i have seen so far) and a bit underwhelming. Also i haven’t seen any celebrities yet and I thought I would have to push my way though them to get anywhere in this town. I have made some tallies of experiences that I thought I would have had in LA by now they are as follows,
Number of celebrities spotted- zero
Number of invites to white parties/ pool parties- zero
Encounters involving drinking in LA bars with Cheryl Crow (with the explicit objective to ‘just have some fun’)- zero
Number of meals involving Mexican food or Burgers- Six
Tally of things tallied for categories that were not considered for my original tally list
Number of people dressed in character costumes of movies that are not currently playing at the Chinese theatre- Five. (Elmo, Pulp Fiction and three different Star wars Characters)
Number of men that tried to sell me very young puppies on the street through emotional manipulation- One (and I don’t want to talk about it, it was actually quite traumatic)
Number of comments on my watermelon shaped handbag- One million (Every American cannot resist commenting on this handbag and Brent has suggested that choosing to bring this particular handbag to The USA was my highest life achievement)
Number of Scientology museums visited- One
Number of other museums visited so far- One (‘The museum of death’ It was pretty gross. and the man who ran the place told us to “Have a nice life” when we left, hilarious!) www.museumofdeath.net
