Geographic Tongue (2003) High Desert Test Sites 3 — Joshua Tree, California.
450 x 450 square feet, green photosensitive, hydroseed mulch, orange construction flags, graphite pencil, sand, food coloring dye on paper, stitched thread on inkjet print and tissue, desert, water, seed and sun, 2003.
“Geographic Tongue”, was a temporary painting of three biomorphic shapes made October 25th, 2003 during Andrea Zittel’s HDTS 3 weekend. It began when I peered into a large telescope provided by Artists’ on Tour during an event at HDTS 1. “Do you see the man in the moon?” I was asked. “No,” I thought. “I see my tongue.” For HDTS 3, I proposed to transpose my “tongue print” on the desert floor with an ephemeral painting in order to see.
The location was Wonder Valley. This desert test site looked like the surface of the moon, cratered and textured with light and dark shadows. From time to time, my body (or my tongue to be precise) looked the same. My tongue exhibits an idiopathic condition known as “geographic”. For years the strangeness of this phenomenon has been a source of curiosity to me. I wondered if I was allergic to something or if it was just a simple chemical reaction?
Scientifically, the reason for this is unknown. A geographic tongue refers to an unusual, migrating, slightly raised surface pattern. The surface of my tongue reacts in response to sensations of taste and various emotional states. Personally, I refer to my tongue’s pattern as an emotional barometer or physiological legend or key.
They say a snake sees with its tongue. What does my tongue see? For this project, my tongue’s pattern became guide and instrument for perception. I used this pattern as road map and tuning fork. Suspended between two places; the physical present position of my body in space—feet planted in sand, and the recollection/memory of part of my body, my tongue’s pattern, reflected in this moonlike environment. I made image and memory material in painted form to try to collapse and collude two disparate spaces of internal and external, public and private, near and far with a desert painting.
To prepare, I photographed my tongue’s pattern, drew a grid on the printed image, made several test collages and finally, painted the design in larger-than-life scale onto the desert crust the day of the event. The painting was intended to fade away. It was “painted” with a photosensitive, industrial grade, landscaping material called hydroseed.
I needed clearance to paint from Jerry Grott of the salt manufacturing plant, Superior Salt, in Wonder Valley. He agreed to meet with me off Iron Age Road at the site. I remember seeing his sedan lumber over the sandy soil of the valley. It looked as if he’d taken a direct route over the salt flats of Dale Lake from his factory to where I stood. We met and talked. With a broad sweep of his arm, waving and pointing, he tossed an imaginary lasso around his property and indicated that the rest, over there, was BLM land. From what I could discern in his loose gesture of a boundary, the land I wanted was within his jurisdiction. He granted me permission to use the land.
As Andrea told me one day while out there, “Art gets good when there is risk of being arrested or embarrassed. Well, with the possibility of trespassing and painting a large image of my tongue, I figured this project covered both.
Emails were exchanged between Pat Flanagan, the steward of the desert, and me. With her guidance and that of Bruce Hanson, a biologist and environmental consultant, I adapted the content of the slurry to lessen its impact on the desert terrain. Binder was omitted and in lieu of grass seed, I hand-harvested local seed; cattle spinach, desert lavender, creosote and added that to the mix.
On Saturday, October 25th, 2003, we drove out from Los Angeles, met the landscapers at dawn. I had previously arranged purchasing water from Dave at Star’s Way Out over beers. He generously offered us the hose to his well. After some time, the truck was filled with water, seed and dye. From there, we drove out Iron Age Road to “Jerry’s Land”. Working from the preparatory collages and printed images of my tongue’s topography, I charted the pattern in a 150 x 150 square yard grid with construction flags. Then, I walked-off and outlined three, oval, organic-looking shapes. Next, these shapes were filled-in with hydroseed mulch sprayed to my specifications by two professional landscapers. As they sprayed mulch, I defined the borders. I edged their form by masking the desert crust with a large sheet of cardboard crafted into a makeshift shield. As I crouched down, I held the cardboard upright and hid behind it. The cardboard blocked my vision as it protected me from being doused in spray.
The slurry swept past in waves. I followed in step with its sound. Blind to the resulting image, I painted by sound and feel. I privileged these “lesser” senses, sound and touch, over vision and painted with my ears. The limits of the form were defined. Shape was silhouetted against open desert. The border of the design, albeit a soft and porous boundary, contained diaphanous material. Minute, liquid particles accumulated. Color filled form and line made shape. As a result, drawing and painting by sound and not sight was one of the most interesting and unanticipated moments of the project. I continue to pursue a trans-sensory painting approach in my current painting practice.
The curve in one of the painted forms acted like an eddy in which the spectators to the site clustered. The design of the form lent temporary reprieve to open space. Friends gathered in this curve; Alan Koch, Linda Tallman, Kathleen Johnson, Giovanni Jance, Conny Purtill, Jenelle Porter, Chris James, Chris Young, Connie Walsh and myself. We stood, surprisingly, very near to each other, considering the abundance of space. We watched the sun set. Painted design created and framed social space in response to the vastness of the desert. It enclosed but also embraced.
The painting was short-lived. It was documented with film and video and recorded with and without the orange flags. The photosensitive dye in the mulch faded quickly from green to brown and eventually, completely disintegrated and disappeared within weeks.
In hindsight, my desert test site project partially responded to Lucy Lippard’s call in “From the Center, Feminist’s Essays on Women’s Art” (1976) for women artists to address pregnancy more often in their art. In part, “Geographic Tongue” was a temporary monument to miscarriage. It memorialized miscarriage with a painting of an entropic, fetal effigy. This impermanent artwork operated metonymically as loss.
