What New Mexico Architects Make for Themselves
A mulberry tree with a perfect horizontal branch begs for a swing on long summer afternoons. To capture that sense of childhood days that never end, I scaled up the swing to make adults look and feel like kids again. Made from a handsome piece of walnut, the swing measures 5′ across by 10″ deep and 2″ thick. It was hand sanded and finished with two coats of polyurethane. I used stainless steel plates to prevent a crack along one edge of the wood from growing.
reliquary: a vessel in which sacred relics are placed.
relic: a trace left after a disappearance.
Once in a while I come upon a place and an understanding occurs without me being aware. It is an intuitive response to the discovery of self through exposure to a new terrain. There is no moment of recognition, just a feeling of calm, a freedom of movement, an ease of expression.
When I am removed from that place, the memory of it resonates. My attachment to such a location is a quasi-mystical experience, which can only be processed once I have uncovered through photography the source of my engagement.
A New Mexico Reliquary records the enduring presence of two such landscapes in my life — the mesa grasslands east of Las Vegas and the lava beds south of Grants (El Malpais). Each landscape possesses a characteristically different sense of place, yet both hold an equal ability to etch themselves in my memory. To document each site, I photographed in both black-and-white and color the vistas, forms, and textures which defined for me what it was to live in New Mexico and be a part of its land.
Composed of two black-and-white images bracketed by two color images, each quad explores the dialogue between the macro and the micro, the image and the afterimage, the field and the location. The path (color) describes the journey, while the detail (black-and-white) makes it accessible. Experience ensues through the oscillatory flow between corporeal and mystical space.
A New Mexico Reliquary is one narrative in an on-going series chronicling the places, either lived-in or traveled-to, which have woven themselves into my personal history. Each essay reveals the indefinable which captured my imagination and commanded my devotion at a site, deriving identity through unfoldment.
Melissa Cicetti
18 July 2011
Brooklyn, New York
New Mexico fires near Los Alamos and severe droughts have put everyone in the state on alert. It rained a few days ago and Architect 11 told me the reason: He had made a bullroarer. Bullroarers are made by indigenous people all over the world and by the Hopi Indians specifically for rain. They are called bullroarers because of the roaring thunder-like sound they make when spun.
Crafted from a Piñon tree that died on his property from drought conditions, he used a 10″ chopsaw to get the general shape for the Bullroarer. He then used a hand chisel and sanded it to achieve the flat oval disk shape. The Bullroarer was swung at high speeds over his head and after he performed the ceremony virga started to appear all around. See the last image – I now believe.
The louver will be embedded in a concrete wall so only the front louver blades are exposed.
The unit is comprised of 6 blades machined to 7 5/8″ widths between two side panels. A bug screen is welded on the back to prevent flies and critters from finding their way into the structure. Rebar will run through the triangular cutouts along the bottom to fasten the vent firmly to the wall.
An epoxy primer was applied and followed by a Polyurethane topcoat – IMRON (automotive paint) by Dupont in what the architect describes as the “Battleship Gray” color.
Mike had been living in a small apartment downtown and wanted to replace the strip of grass in front of his building with a vegetable garden. His proposal to the landlord was to create rammed earth planters. In the course of the back and forth negotiation, Mike ended up testing his ability to construct the rammed earth installations by using the technique to create a garden sculpture. For the formwork, he used 2×4-scrap wood reclaimed from waste dumpsters in nearby residential construction.
Mike up-cycled the formwork into furniture. It retains the original rough and unfinished surface on the interior. The exterior was painstakingly sanded and filled then stained and received nine coats of polyurethane to create a rich blue-lacquer-like finish. We wish him farewell as he moves to Manhattan this summer. The bench will follow sometime in the winter.
Mounting Plate for a Hose Bib to provide secure and serviceable installation. This 5/8″stainless steel plate was machined and welded to a 1″ diameter pipe coupling and steel pipe sleeve through the wall to securely receive the hose bib. Once the pipes are in place the hose bib will be fastened with the machined screws are currently shown.
The pictures below show the trouble spot. Having been replaced by a plumber the original anchorage was ripped out of the wall leaving the new hose bib loose. Where most would choose to live with it, the perfectionist tendencies of architect 2400 will not allow it. Also shown below is the freeze-proof hose bib that will screw to the mounting plate and a plan drawing at the end so you get the idea of the finished installation.
Architect 301 built a tree platform 8′ above ground in a large shady elm for his children to enjoy. Brainstorming on a log ladder to reach the platform led him to critically assess the dirt around the tree. While taking a walk in his neighborhood he noticed a series of freshly cut elm stumps at a nearby home. The next day the stumps were on Craigslist and available for free pick up. Dirt patch problem solved! Instead of a lawn, a luxury in the desert, or a rock Xeriscape, he would cut the elm tree into rings and begin building a fun floor for his kids to play on and from which to construct imaginary worlds. I like to imagine a tightly packed grove once stood there.
After getting his brother-in-law to help retrieve the stumps, he set to cutting them into short pieces with a borrowed chainsaw. This was not the first time Architect 301 wielded a chain saw, the other was long ago in Mexico when he cut off limbs from avocado trees with his father. Unfortunately the chainsaw’s blade wasn’t long enough to cut through diameters larger than 12″. He will be using those larger pieces for firewood. With this size limitation in mind Architect 301 continues to search Craigslist in search of telephone poles he can chop on site.
Shown here is an area about 1/4 of the total surface to be covered. We will continue to follow this project so keep on the lookout for more posts.
Oryx were introduced into Southern New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range (Trinity site) in 1969 as exotic big game. Coyotes and mountain lions posed no threat and the Oryx thrived, tipping the balance of the White Sands National Monument’s ecosystem. The stylized image of stark black horns against white gypsum sands is one only conjured up in dreams. I recently received an Oryx skull with horns from a friend (thanks, Matt) whose father found while walking near White Sands. A dream becomes reality.
The second component of the design derives from my birthplace, the Caribbean. The bracelets pictured are strands of black coral picked up from local fishermen in the Island of Margarita, Venezuela. Black corals are a deep water tree-like coral. Their living tissue is brightly colored but the name derives from the black color of their skeleton. They are very slow growing and some date back 2000 years – growing an average of .0005″ a year.
The process of making this piece includes 3d scanning the bracelets so they can be manipulated in the modeling program Rhino. The goal is to translate these two natural ornaments into a man-made wearable narrative. There is a kind of symmetry between the two objects. The Oryx horn is not bone, though we often think of it as such. The black coral is much closer to a form of bone, built of calcium carbonate, though it is never referred to in this way. At the same time, they could not be more different. One thrives in the deserts of New Mexico as a transplant and the other a fragile, deep water organism.
The imbed shown above is an anchor point for wood trusses that will support the roof. An “imbed” is an object cast into a concrete or masonry wall and in this case into a cast-in-place concrete soffit. This fabrication has milled holes for rebar to pass through. The thickness of the cast in place concrete is 8″ – the same as one course of CMU. A CMU course will rest on top of the concrete where another imbed anchor will be located—see picture below on the right. These two anchoring points span the full height of the truss.
The imbed is shown below in place but sans concrete. Opposite from these anchor points will be another set of imbeds in a parallel masonry wall. These will be posted next week.
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