Hot Tub Time Machine

When I start a blog, the template asks for a title of the entry. So I came up with " Hot Tub Time Machine" - and I will explain. I lifted the title from a movie by the same name and in no way endorse or condemn its quality. I just thought it fits the thread of a painting project while tapping into contemporary pop culture. It also tickled my smarty-pants funny bone.

I will back up quite a bit, now. I was in my early teens when I first came face to face with the ancestral pueblo culture at Mesa Verde. I became (and continue to be) obsessed with these people. Raised on John Wayne movies and the stereotype of horseback nomadic warriors, I was dumbstruck by these master mason farmers that built enchanting structures within the cliffs. I started reading about them and any other media that popped up. Not just the Mesa Verde people but all the other emanations of this culture that spans many millennia and language groups. They persist into the 21st century, not an easy task for First Peoples on Turtle Island.

One of my early guide book acquisitions mentioned pueblo ruins all along the Ojo Caliente Creek in northern New Mexico. This was a major route for us when we started on continual trips to Santa Fe when we were twenty- something artists. Santa Fe continues to be one of the art meccas for art in the southwest. The highway drops from the highlands of the San Luis Valley and Taos Plateau into the lower and warmer shallow canyons of tributaries to the Rio Chama. Ancestral Tewa settled this zone and lived and died for generations building extensive villages along the creeks and side canyons. The guidebook boasted that some of these towns were the largest in the southwest, even larger than the fabled Great Houses of Chaco Canyon. The reason that they are not readily celebrated is basically a consequence of geology.

The spectacular buildings that are renowned in the southwest, such as Chaco and Mesa Verde, were built of durable shaped sandstone blocks gleaned from within the canyons in which they were built. No such sandstones in the Chama watershed. The sprawling Tewa houses were build of adobe and rounded river boulders. They began to melt as soon as they mere no longer maintained. No wall remnants protruding from sandstone bricklike piles. Only a trained eye can discern the low humps of room blocks where once hundreds lived. Another clue are crater holes from pot hunters. 

When I read that the road we take to Santa Fe actually runs though the plaza of a prehistoric Tewa pueblo, I was floored. Even today I slow down to take in the slumped walls, plaza and kiva depressions. I pay my respects- and express anger that highway engineers plowed through a village that is still alive to its descendants. 

To top this finding, I also noticed another large village located right across the Ojo Caliente Creek from the map in the guidebook. I could see its ancient footprint immediately- sloped mounds in a line making rectangular patterns of room blocks. Also the telltale craters of pot hunters.

Over time I came to discover other melted villages in the Ojo Caliente drainage. This valley was busy in centuries past, hosting many more people than it does now.

So where does the Hot Tub reference in this writing come from?

Right downstream from the aforementioned twin villages is the Ojo Caliente Hot Springs. Now it is a destination resort/spa with many different therapeutic springs. It has become a nexus of upscale patronage- from what used to be called New- Agers, Yuppies and Gringo Wannabees. Like almost all hot springs that fell into disrepair, it was rediscovered by hippies in the 70's and then rapidly gentrified.

It is no surprise that there is an ancient village on the bluff above the springs. In its 300 year occupation it had up to 2000 rooms. I am sure the cousins up and down the Ojo from at least a dozen other villages and surrounding areas popped in whenever they could.

That's a lot of soaks.

The springs figure prominently in the mythology of the Tewa people. I can't seem to find any reference to the condition of the springs when they were first recorded by early Spanish explorers. Were there structures about- or was it a sacred site just honoring the flow of water in various pools? If anyone knows its pre-colonial state I would love to find out.

So that's the Hot Tub part.

The Time Machine part is a painting project. I had done a previous painting of Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon. Raised on National Geographic articles that showed artist's renditions of ancient sites rejuvenated and reanimated I decided to do a similar treatment with this large Chacoan Great House.

See this previous blog: http://paidtowander.blogspot.com/2014/02/exploring-past-by-illustrating-in.html

And this one about a ruin in Canyon de Chelley: 

http://paidtowander.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-white-house-refurbished.html 

Driving one day on the way through Ojo and slowing down to take in the pueblo plaza of Howiri and gazing across the river to its twin city, I hatched the idea to rejuvenate this place- at least visually. To go back in time to around 1450 AD when the whole valley was hoppin'. I daresay there were more people living on the Ojo in the 1400's than there are today.

So I took the day to scout for the view I wanted and after some surveillance decided to do a piece from the south looking north where I could see both villages on either side of the creek. To do so I would need to scramble to a vantage point that I could see from the road. 

I parked at the hot springs and went up on a well marked trail on the same ridge that hosts the aforementioned village that overlooked the hot springs and headed north away from the ruin.

The trail soon veered off from my planned route to the vista overlook. I was about to head off trail down and across a ravine when two crows landed directly in front of me on a juniper. As if to say "where do you think you're going?"

They were just watching me. I could almost touch the closest one. I pulled out my camera and took some shots of the pair. They still did not take flight. I finally had an intuition and explained my plan to create a painting and my purpose for heading the way I wanted to. Still no movement.

I then decided to ask permission to enter the ravine and promised to be respectful. As soon as I asked one of the pair squawked and flew off, the other waited a few beats and did the same. They both flew across the ravine in the direction I wanted to go. This encounter inspired the painting below.

"Guardians of the Kiva", oil on linen, 16"x20"

There was no kiva in the ravine (that I knew of) but I put it in to convey the sense of sacredness of the area. 

I reached my intended vantage place as the low sun lit up the landscape in dramatic fashion. I could clearly see the remnants of the two villages.

I was able to find archaeological floorplans of the villages and an illustration of one of the towns and used them as reference. The painting is intended to be a recreation of late afternoon in the valley when the twin cities were vibrant with hundreds of Tewa prospering in their lifeway.

"Twin Cities of Ojo Caliente", oil on linen, 12"x16"

Thanks for reading and looking. The Twin Cities painting is still available.