Stone Soup: A Reflection — Couch in the Desert

Abney Wallace, *Circle*, string line, 16d nail, dimensional lumber, upcycled exterior latex house paint, solar flood lights. 2023

Stone Soup: A Reflection

By Ellie Rush

When Bailey Anderson, Iulia Filipov-Serediuc, and Karla Lagunas began searching for artists to participate in Stone Soup, last November’s inaugural event for the Desert Biennial Project, I immediately knew I wanted to be part of it. The event’s title is based on a folk tale where a stranger passes through a community and offers to make them a soup with nothing but water and a stone, but each person contributes ingredients to it, and ultimately the community creates a satisfying meal. This idea was reinterpreted by having each artist bring their work to the Jean Dry Lake Bed (about 25 miles south of Las Vegas), set it up, and enjoy it with the other artists. After submitting my work and being curated into the program, the day finally arrived. My fiancé and I followed the coordinates down the I-15 and out of town into the neighboring BLM lands. After the asphalt was eventually replaced by tire trails in the sand, and our navigation skills were thoroughly tested, we finally emerged from a cloud of kicked-up dust to uncover our destination. We saw everyone already exposing themselves to the heat of the afternoon sun while building structures, assembling sculptures, and installing their pieces, so we jumped right in to help as soon as we could. After a couple of hours, everything was ready, so Bailey, Iulia, and Karla officially welcomed us and kicked off the event.

Karla Lagunas, performance still, *Metatelos III*, 2023. (Watch here)

The variety of work and how it was integrated into the environment left a deep impression on me, like an echo of the land art pieces tucked throughout Nevada, but with none of the hubris. There was everything from sculptures, to performance pieces, to paintings, to fiber arts, even video works. Some pieces were hung on, set atop, or projected onto untreated plywood boards, which created a compelling gradual transition from natural materials to fine art objects while also reminding the viewer how temporary the experience was. This finiteness was hammered home by the pieces that directly engaged the sandy soil, such as Nick Giordano’s transference, an unstretched canvas painting laid flat and secured with a pile of dirt on each corner; or Dan45 Hernandez’s Faithful Companion, a skateboard tombstone plunged into the earth; or Geo’s East Las Vegas Golden Bearpoppy (and Mojave Bee Poppy), a pair of metal flowers, one potted and on a pedestal and one planted in the ground; or even Adriana Chavez’s performance Claimed!, which involved her character Juan Chico colonizing the surrounding area by staking cardboard “CLAIMED” signs throughout it.

Chavez’s performance was one of multiple throughout the night, and each piece was similarly illuminated by the environment. For instance, Shahab Zargari’s New Oddities, an experimental music piece featuring a blend of AI-generated, sampled, and original audio, felt remarkably at home in the middle of the dry lake bed, embracing our otherworldly surroundings. And once the sun went down, there was Keeva Lough’s Ad Hoc Tower of Babel, a combination of projected text and performance evocative of evangelical preaching. Dressed as her father, who is a minister, she invited the audience into the futile task of building a tower to heaven, which was quite an attractive invitation with nothing but the late-autumn desert’s bitter cold air around us and cracked earth beneath our feet.

Keeva Lough, performance still, *Tower of Ad Hoc Babel*, 2023. (Watch here)

All these presentations were wonderfully engaging, but my favorites may have been the sculptural works that highlighted the drastic changes in lighting as time went on. The standalone, haunting pillars of Abney Wallace’s Circle cast monumental, looming shadows that practically stretched to the foot of the mountain as the sun went down. D.K. Sole’s Metal bottle caps discovered in Clark County and covered in tinfoil, featured two arrangements of hundreds of bottle caps carefully wrapped in aluminum foil, which sat like two shimmering bodies of water rediscovering the dry lake bed, transitioning from silver in the day to a dazzling pinkish champagne as golden hour settled in. A similar effect was captured by Alisha Kerlin’s BAWLING, but more colorful and on a larger scale, featuring a trailing, reflective collection of weathered ornaments and other miscellaneous objects.

D.K. Sole, *Metal bottle caps discovered in Clark County and covered in tinfoi*l, bottle caps, aluminum foil, 2023.

While considering the diverse works represented by this event, it became clear that it had sought out and achieved the opposite of the white cube gallery we’ve become so acquainted with. Those spaces often feel unchanging and immovable, sometimes sterilizing the work that occupies them. Stone Soup did the opposite, electrifying the work by placing it in an environment where it was forced to reckon with the landscape and other groups of people nearby, rather than ignore them. Watching that reckoning occur, I realized this was the most wholly communal way I’ve ever engaged with art and other artists. Despite being put together in only a couple of months in response to the cancellation of Goldwell Open Air Museum’s Bullfrog Biennial, everyone pitched in equally to make this happen. Whether that was by giving funds, sharing food, contributing labor, making sure porta potties and generators were secured, or bringing woodshop scraps to fuel our fire, each of the nearly forty artists played a crucial role in bringing this event to life. Our hearts were entirely in it, and it was truly for the joy of creating and the bolstering of community that we came together.

Alisha Kerlin, *BAWLING*, ornaments and objects collected from the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, 2023.

When the darkness of night came and the cold with it, we all huddled around our small but mighty fire. We talked, passed around drinks to celebrate our group achievement, and thanked those who made it happen. I had proper conversations with folks I had seen at other events before but never had the chance to officially meet. I got to talk to peers and mentors alike about their work and how seeing it in a new context was a breath of fresh air. And the best, most relieving part was that we did it just for ourselves. It would be pointless to explain how the work itself gets so easily drowned out by the necessity of success since any creative already knows that struggle so well. I’d rather share how we reveled in art fulfilling its purpose of bringing creative people and their ideas together, each individual adding themselves to our beautiful, boiling pot of Stone Soup.

Geovany Uranda, *East Las Vegas Golden Bearpoppy (and Mojave Bee Poppy)* rebar wire, Mojave Desert sand, and a glass container, 2023.

All images courtesy of Desert Biennial Project.

ELLIE RUSH is an artist, writer, and student. She was born and raised in Las Vegas, and has created many local private and public artworks, including a mural for the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, a painting for the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine building, and utility box paintings in the Arts District as part of the City of Las Vegas AMP Program. She creates mixed media artworks referencing her own photographic collages. Her themes primarily include everyday life, internal wrestling, and the relationship between the individual and the universal. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art at UNLV in May 2024, and she is currently working on her Bachelor of Arts in English. Link to her Instagram.

Stone Soup by the Desert Biennial Project was presented on November 11th, 2023.

Instagram: @desertbiennialproject

The Desert Biennial Project recently released a mini catalog available to pre-order. Designed by Max Krosta and Mak Moline. All proceeds go towards the next event in 2025.

Posted and published by Lyssa Park on Sept 17, 2024.