The Desert is no Lady. Women artists of the American South West - ACE275.3

Landscapes. VO of Harmony Hammond, painter, talking about the tradition of landscape painting in New Mexico, particularly by incomers. Hammond suggests that most of this is from a traditional "perspective" point of view. Hammond VO says she’s more interested in the quality of feeling of a place. Shots of buildings in the desert. One of Hammond’s works, part painting, part sculpture. Derelict farm buildings. Art works. Hammond VO: her Farm Ghosts series (1993) is about deconstructing ideas from the remnants of objects found at these abandoned farms. Hammond talks about her work The Farmer’s Wife, referring to domestic environment, and interior and exterior spaces. The Farmer’s Wife: Hammond VO on the windmill, the linoleum; "an excavation of memory". Derelict buildings. Images from Meridel Rubenstein’s photographic Habitat series (c.1992); her VO explains that they’re based on three sites in New Mexico, and that her central themes are home and issues about home. Rubenstein on home and connections or dislocations. More of Rubenstein’s photographs. Her VO suggests that people come from outside with longing for things they’ve been unable to find elsewhere. Buildings and people. Rubenstein VO continues, saying that the world has become more complex, issues more difficult. Example of Rubenstein’s collage work. Her VO says she tries to represent that complexity, a sense of lots of things happening at once, and talks about how layered imagery helped her do this. Other multi-layered images. Aerial view of river. Views of pueblo villages. Landscape. Nina Naranjo Morse, sculptor; her VO describes her activities as she drives along a mountain road, walks through woods, and gathers clay into buckets. Morse outside her home, sieving the clay. VO continues. Morse in her studio talking about how her upbringing made her very conscious of her environment, that the pueblo way of thinking doesn’t compartmentalise things. Sculptures. Morse VO continues: there’s no separate sense of "art" as everything can be "artful". Photograph of Morse’s mother. Morse VO continues: remembers being with her mother at a museum, and seeing a group of women looking at her and her mother’s work. Morse in her studio, tells how her mother explained to one of them who thought that Nina’s work was strange, that both their work was the "same". Morse explains why this connection is important to her, that the line goes back and back to "the clay mother". Aerial shot of mountains: Morse VO believes this is why she has to get her clay from the mountains.