The Black Place 11A

When multidisciplinary artist Walter Nelson moved to northern New Mexico in 1982, he began looking for the landscapes that had inspired the work of painter Georgia O'Keeffe in the Southwest, including a geologically unusual site in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness she called "The Black Place." Finding his own inspiration there, Nelson photographed extensively in this landscape of extremes. It has only two seasons, he writes: "Spring-summer-fall are characterized by baking heat, ferocious winds, and less than four inches of rain annually, while winter is bitterly cold and violently windy, with snow sweeping across the land formations." Here, Nelson harnesses a tension between three-dimensional space and its representation as a flat, abstract design. He sought out this particular site as a likely location for artist Georgia O'Keeffe's 1942 paintings Black Place I and Black Place II, as well as a photograph made by her friend Eliot Porter, creating an interesting visual conversation across time.