Buffalo Thunder: Green Technology/Innovation

New Mexico Arts; Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino; The Hilton, and Pueblo of Pojoaque presented TIME – Temporary Installations Made for the Environment at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino from August to October 2010. New Mexican artists were invited to create temporary environmental artworks based on green technology and innovation. Seven artworks were exhibited in exterior locations at the Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino. The artworks were displayed for over two months, and at the end of the exhibit were disassembled and removed, leaving no trace of ever having existed.

Featured Work:

Harmony Spirit
Artists Max Almy, Teri Yarbrow, Billy Valenzuela, and Cavan Gonzales created a multi-media artwork featuring a projection inside a tipi with the use of a LED projector (green technology). Tipi builder Billy Valenzuela and San Ildefonso Pueblo potter Cavan Gonzales constructed a tipi designed for new media and projections, and a video made by Almy and Yarbrow was displayed on rocks and scrim cloth painted with imagery inspired by the Pojoaque people.

Depth of Field
Ryan Henel created handmade adobe pillars that supported steel windmills. The artwork sought to raise awareness of alternative energy marked by its location in a drainage area purpose-built for the property.

Melt
Amy Schmierbach’s installation of ethereal colored globes made from biodegradable soap and earth was placed near water drainage to bring awareness to recycling and keeping our environment clean.

Crude Fracture
Chrissie Orr created a land art rendering made from earth, cornmeal, turmeric, chile, and molasses; animated by the bodies in motion of DANCING EARTH, the nation's foremost indigenous contemporary dance ensemble. Led by choreographer Rulan Tangen, several members of DANCING EARTH reside in New Mexico, and gathered to create a site-specific ritual dedicated to the healing of the waters of the Gulf, in reflection of artist Chrissie Orr's land-based rumination of the same theme - the black rift of oil that blows open the imbalance of modern systems in paradox to the natural world.

Theremin Project
Joel Hobbie used recycled metal from Los Alamos National Laboratory to create his sustainable sculpture. LEDs and a set of solar panels allowed his interactive work to function like a musical instrument that controlled light rather than sound.

Consumption
Beth Rekow created a reclaimed plastic body of work that related to human consumption of resources, materials, and ideas, concepts, and images. Rekow created several pieces including a 200-yard plastic rope, 7-foot diameter ball, and a chandelier of plastic rope. The artwork focused on sustainability and the need to consume less.

The Watchers
Rose Simpson created abstract human profiles as adobe mud drawings on the main building of the Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino. The architecture of the resort mimics traditional Pueblo adobe mud-brick architecture. The mud figures followed the attention to detail of early Pueblo architecture, and sought to provide a contrast and acknowledge the dichotomy between traditional and modern relationships to architecture and how that aesthetic is portrayed to the larger public environment.