why art & politics must mix
As artists, we have a unique position and responsibility for fighting against socio-political and environmental injustice.
Petrified forests. Alien patterns of lichens attached to bare stone. Sand crystallized by lightning. A bleak smattering of snow across steep, crumbling canyons.
This humanly uninhabitable land of extremes feeds my spirit. And it was nearly lost in the recent public lands sales proposal.
And that’s one of the reasons I write about socio-political and environmental issues and not just about art. To me, it’s all interwoven.
Just like any other artist, my inspiration feeds – or starves– on my surroundings. The recent public lands sales proposal, which was thankfully struck down this past weekend, had put over 2 million acres of public land at risk of being sold and developed for infrastructural purposes or oil drilling. The lands under threat included extensive Bureau of Land Management land across the west of the United States.
I won’t go into the tremendous impact the sales would have had on already marginalized Native American tribes, our already dwindling natural resources and ecosystems, and recreational access to the public, although those are the primary concerns for why so many of us fought the proposal so aggressively.
I want to discuss how important such environments are to humanity’s creativity by example of two backpacking trips I’ve attempted into a remote desert in New Mexico. The first was in May of 2018, the second in November of 2024.
Both times were brutal, the first so hot and quiet one could forget life existed anywhere on the planet; the second bitterly cold, ending in a white-covered landscape. But never have I seen anywhere so beautiful, and already I ache to return.
In a few days in that landscape, I’ve seen more strangeness than I’ve seen in whole years of my life. Stone formations so bizarre they make places like Moab and Zion National Parks seem commonplace. Each new valley and dip and canyon revealing new colors of stone, glistening turrets, veins of fulgurite weaving amidst the cracked earth, caves half-hidden by shifting sands, mud shaped into other-wordly sculptures.
The ground is littered with every color of stone you can imagine, intermingled with fossils and interrupted by copses of petrified forests. Then, riverbeds, formed by violent flash floods– one of which I witnessed as it thundered out of nowhere following a violent storm, heaving and shrinking back and forth in a way no true river behaves. In summer, no trace of life beyond ants. Nearing winter, tracks of jackrabbits and coyote. At night, skies so clear the detail and brightness of the Milky Way messes with your head, punctuated by shooting stars. Sunsets like blazing fires on the horizon. And silence so unpolluted it fills your being.
The idea of that place disappearing nearly broke my heart. Both expeditions into that wildness tested my strength of body and will, but both broke into my mind and imagination like few other things have. The evolutions that place has experienced over the millenia boggle the mind. Ruins mark the traces of human life hundreds of years ago. The petrified trees signal a time before that place became a desert. Fossils signal echoes of the few hardy life forms that manage to live in that desolation today.
And each day there are fewer places like it. Public lands have been saved for now. But numerous world heritage sites and marine sanctuaries are still under threat. The Great Barrier Reef has already nearly died. The oceans are overfished, and countless species face extinction every day. Developments eat further and further into what little wilderness we have left, encroaching on forests, swamps, coastlines, polluting water sources, erasing trees, damaging carbon sinks while creating more carbon emissions that have nowhere to go.
All of this affects all of humanity. As artists, many of us have special ties to these places, finding inspiration from them. I’ve met many people who don’t understand how a hard desert can feed my inspiration, but I’ve yet to meet an artist that doesn’t find life on trails, in gardens, from flowers or scenic views, from the mountains or the sea. And, as artists, we have special stock in these natural beauties and unique voices to combat harmful proposals.
I love to talk about writing or painting. I love to share my work and hear what other artists are creating.
But, if we don’t use our creative voices to fight for what gives us life, both literally and figuratively, we won’t have voices left to use.
