A visiting performance artist! From Costa Rica! All the classes in the art dept. are alerted and it is arranged that we, the students, will participate in a performance. A collaborative performance … there are approx 30 artists (or art students) involved in this project. The artist, Elia Arce, meets with us and we discuss what concepts we wish to convey to our audience. Loneliness? Time? Death? Displacement? We decide on Time and Displacement. Then the question of location … where shall we do the performance? How to document? Our final decision is to go out to a lonely country road, with a group of people (and several babies to indicate generations) and take a photo on an empty field with a wide sky spread above us. We find one and take test shots.Here are photos of our first scouting trip to locate a road.
Lonely Texas Road and Artists
Professor Karen Sanders
During the week Elia and Prof. Karen Sanders change the location to a Texas ranch where a friend, Betty, will allow us to use her empty field. After several attempts we locate some babies, set a time, and go to the ranch. It is 5:00 pm so the evening light is excellent, the weather is clear, and the babies are mellow! Prof. Sanders is a digital photographer and she arranges us all in the field and, with the help of two other photographers, does a triple-person exposure. This means the three photographers line up, are assigned a section of the group of people to take a picture of, and on the count of “three” all snap the picture. This is going to be one BIG picture … it will be difficult to develop and print … and hard to line up the 3 photos so it appears seamless. Hats off to Prof. Sanders!
Ranch House and Native Plants
The ranch house has native plants in pots lined up, ready for sale and shipment to various parks and reserves, where they will be used to reconstitute the landscape near the Rio Grande River.
Ranch Bird Houses
There are also bird houses and bird feeders scattered around the garden and a chorus of songs, and cackles, and chirps coming from the trees.
Mary P Williams 
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