As tent campers and National Parks enthusiasts, we spend a lot of time in the company of Airstreams, Winnebagos, and Jaycos, and have come to appreciate that for many, the RV makes a kind of relationship to nature possible. RVs can recreate the comfort and access of home, in the middle of spaces the federal government has set aside to be preserved as wild. We have seen our fellow campers set up potted plants, satellite dishes, and full multi-course meals, in the middle of what we hope to be wilderness. This comfort and accessibility is in opposition to romantic visions of national parks and some approaches to conservation. As nature writer Edward Abbey put it in Desert Solitaire, “You can’t see anything from a car.” There is a value judgement implicit in this statement. Abbey and others equate a certain connection to nature with spirituality, purity, and a unique kind of enlightenment, but that sort of experience in the outdoors deliberately excludes most park goers. Using a state with a wide variety of public lands as a springboard, we explore all five Utah National Parks - Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef - and consider the complexities of a relationship to landscape that is heavily mediated by vehicles, cameras, and our own nostalgia.
We wish to acknowledge the land where this work was made, as the management of these places has happened from time immemorial by the Ute, Southern Paiute, and the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. While these sites are under the control of the National Parks system, it is indigenous peoples who continue to put necessary pressure on the US government to preserve these spaces.
We wish to acknowledge the land where this work was made, as the management of these places has happened from time immemorial by the Ute, Southern Paiute, and the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. While these sites are under the control of the National Parks system, it is indigenous peoples who continue to put necessary pressure on the US government to preserve these spaces.
- Katie Hargrave / Meredith Lynn
Katie Hargrave and Meredith Lynn are artists and educators who work collaboratively to explore the historic, cultural, and environmental impacts of public land. Their work has been shown at the Wiregrass Museum of Art (Dothan, Alabama), House Guest Gallery (Louisville, Kentucky), and has been published by Walls Divide Press. Together they have been artists in residence at Signal Fire (Portland, Oregon).
Katie Hargrave is based in Chattanooga and has also had exhibitions at The Front (New Orleans, Louisiana), Neon Heater (Finley, Ohio) and the Wienberg/Newton Gallery (Chicago). She has been an artist in residence at Epicenter (Green River, Utah), Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts (Raybun Gap, Geogia), and the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vermont).
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Meredith Lynn is based in Tallahassee, Florida. Her solo work has recently been shown at the Morris Graves Museum of Art (Eureka, California), Miami University of Ohio, and the Alexander Brest Gallery at Jacksonville University. She has been artist in residence at the Jentel Foundation (Sheridan, Wyoming), the Kimmel Harding Nelson (Nebraska City, Nebraska), and the Vermont Studio Center. Hargrave and Lynn met at the University of Iowa, where they both earned Master of Fine Arts degrees
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