A few days ago, while I was working on my statement, a piece of information kept coming back to me after reading it and writing about it. It was about the medicine wheel.
The Tabeguache/Ute put one in the center of every new camp, connecting them to Mother Earth. For some reason, I couldn’t get this out of my head. I was trying to visualize it. Was it big? Was it small? What was it made of? I had gathered a lot of white quartz rock on our walks and decided to lay them out on a Ponderosa Pine stump. I wasn’t sure it was going to work. It didn’t look that impressive in real life. Collodion negatives and prints have a way of transforming things and telling their own story.
I really love this print. I’m sure it will be in the final selection of the work. The white quartz is bright and illuminated and the swirl from the old lens gives the image motion - like it’s alive. I really do love it.