Category Archives: Santa Fe Poetry Yard

First Sculpture Up In Poetry Yard

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Desiccation: Dormancy: Deluge, a sculpture by Isabel Winson-Sagan, is the first piece to go up in the Yard. It is made of wood and the plastic caps off of baby formula. It references forest fire, and the flooding caused by ecological destruction.

The photographs are by Matthew Morrow.

Miriam and Isabel are a mother/daughter creative dup working under the name Maternal Mitochondria.

If you are interested in visiting the Yard or proposing a project, contact us at msagan1035@aol.com

Artist’s Statement from Isabel Winson-Sagan
Miriam Sagan will be opening The Poetry Yard this year, an outside space where sculpture and poetry can be fully experienced. Here is a sneak peak at the first sculpture to go up- a permanent feature of the yard. Made entirely of recycled materials, this land art project helps direct rainfall by incorporating a dry pond. The sculpture’s relationship with the land may change over time- will the wood rot when exposed to water? Or will it remain an ever present reminder of fire and drought? As our climate changes, the sculpture may reflect that change on a local level. Along with the ambiguity and anxiety of climate change, “Desiccation: Dormancy: Deluge” brings up issues of human consumption and how different organisms feed. The sculpture takes inspiration from saprophytic fungi (mushrooms that consume dead wood) and the twin processes of parasitic and symbiotic growth. The plastic and dairy industries are an ambiguous two-edged sword- using unsustainable environmental practices while at the same time greatly expanding human access to food and vital resources. So the question is: how do we achieve a balance between human needs and biological destruction?
The text on the piece reads:
(A triangle) Between me / G-d / and the water

Poetry Yard

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I live on the 600 block of Kathryn Street, in a house I bought 35 years ago. “What is this neighborhood?” I asked the realtor as she drove west, out of the center of town and into an increasingly funky and unfamiliar place.
“A neighborhood you can afford,” she said.
I walked up the steps of the adobe stucco house, and looking through the living room window, had a full blown hallucination. I saw what was obviously a funeral, in full swing.
I better buy this house,I thought. I’m meant to live here my whole life and be buried from it.

***

For years I used to say, “I want to buy an empty lot on Agua Fria.” Agua Fria is the central street of the neighborhood, running east/west, all the way down to the old Spanish village of the same name. I didn’t know why, but I wanted another piece of land. Agua Fria has murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and a kind of folly in someone’s front yard. Cement statues and fountains of all kinds fill the space. It has American flags, madonnas, pixies, flowerpots, naked ladies, flamingoes, swans, and cupids. There is also Santa Claus, St. Francis, a dog, a frog, a windmill, angels, and chimes. The sign reads: “The love of this garden reflects the love of Helen’s Beauty.’”At first I assumed this was about Helen of Troy. Then some told me it was the gardener’s wife who had died. At all seasons it is strung with lights.

***

The police shot our neighbor, decades ago, on Hickox Street by the corner of St. Anne’s Church. He was mentally ill, and distraught, threatening to cut himself with a small steak knife. At the end of a long shift on a holiday weekend, a cop shot and killed him. The bullets penetrated the wall of the house a friend of mine was renting. The bullets narrowly missed the bunk beds where the red-headed boys were sleeping. I showed up in shock the next morning around 6 am to check on them and found my friend drinking vodka. I drank a shot myself. A decansos, a memorial, for the deceased sprang up, focused on the stop sign at the corer. Flowers and wreaths and notecards adorned the place where he departed this world. The cop was put on leave, my friend moved and later died, and I lost track of everyone else. Maybe I’m the only one who remembers?

***

The house is just a year or two younger than I am. My neighbor to the north, Gilbert, remembers when he was a toddler and fell into the foundation of what would be my house. It had been raining, and there was standing water. Mrs. Lucero, the across the street neighbor, dashed to pull him out. Gilbert and I are the same age. The house will soon be 70.

***
It was not my funeral that I saw. It was my first husband’s. He, Robert, died as a young man, after surgery. The house was full of people for many days. After he died, a few months later, the forests began to burn. I remember that because he would have been fascinated by the fires, as he knew a lot about the natural world. But he wasn’t there to discuss it with. The Jemez Mountains to the west were volcanic. Now fire covered them, but not a fire that had come from within. The sun turned red at noon Ash started falling on my planters full of pansies. My neighbor, the one whose house was shot up, called and said: “Mir, do you have a valium?” I lied, and said I didn’t.

***

When my mother died, I inherited a share in a piece of property that was contentiously owned by a family group. When it sold, the money confused me. It felt bitter, somehow tainted. Then I realize I could buy an empty lot. And turn it into…a poetry garden with sculpture. I looked all over town. I found an amazing—if scary and overgrown—piece of land that housed a section of the Acequia Madre. That is the central irrigation ditch that runs through town. No one owns it, not the city, not individuals. It is a kid of commons. After many phone calls, I tracked down the elderly man who was the mayor domo in charge of the ditch.”I know that piece of land,” he said. “Don’t buy it. It is cursed. It is good for no one.”

***

I should have realized it wasn’t Helen of Troy. I bet I’m the only person on the westside who cares about Helen of Troy.

***

I bought a different piece of land, one between Agua Fria and the river. Soon after, the entire neighborhood flooded in a hundred years’ storm. For a few years, it was a blank space. There was an abandoned building next to it, and a view of the mountains and the big sky. It was a suburban space, but one that touched on the wild. There was a homeless camp. Boundary lines were unclear. Raccoons, skunks, rabbits, and coyotes crossed it. Of course so did the neighborhood’s raucous crows. Robert Smithson, the father of land art, calls such places the “slurb,” the intersection between the suburban and the wild. Or, between what I call home and the rest of the cosmos.

***

Fire and water. The dead and the living. Earth and air. I did not even need to invoke these muses. They were already present. Here.

***
Recently, I passed Gilbert in the street. He called me over to introduce me to another friend. “This is my neighbor, Miriam,” he said. “She’s lived here her whole life.” We both started to laugh. “Well,” I said, “the only part of my life worth living.” And we kept on laughing.