Rain Dreaming
A Desert Bathing Beauty

I wanted to show with this piece how someone who is naturally attracted to water might react if she were "stuck" in the desert, out of her element, as it were! At the time I made this, water was being rationed in Santa Fe, and the powers that be were talking about rationing it in Albuquerque and Tucson. And a lot of the populace was upset: particularly many of the new comers in Tucson (Tucson has grown rapidly in the last 10 years with primarily folks who have moved from back east) - they seem to have forgotten they now live in a desert! They want their water and can't seem to come to terms with why they can't have it. So this piece sort of came from that: she is lovingly pouring the precious fluid over herself, and wishing herself someplace different.

This piece is carved from a redwood 4x4 post scrap, and decorated with glass seed beads. Her hair is horsehair from Sonora's mane trimmings. Scroll below the image to read the poem I wrote for this piece.











"I wait and I pray
for the rains to come - each day.
It's hard to be a bathing beauty
when water's rationed this-a-way!

You might think that I'd be living by the sea
but I'm stuck here in the desert
'fish out of water' - that's me!

I wish this dry place had
just a little more water:
I can't turn into a tortoise
when I'm at heart an otter!

They talk of this 'monsoon season',
it's hot and it's wet
but it's early in the summer
the fabled monsoon's not here yet.

So right now I splash
in precious water I've saved.
My small solace here and now
till my road to the sea is paved!"