Shower Curtain

Title: Shower Curtain
Time/Place: August 2022  / Mojave Desert
while at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, California USA

Size: 69″ x 70″
Materials: discarded shower curtain found in the Mojave Desert, image transfer of the 1938 Public Land Survey System

Details:
There is an essence of the ridiculous in finding a discarded shower curtain in the desert, a place of extreme drought conditions and fights over water rights. There is also an essence of the ridiculous in the history of the public land survey system used to promote homesteading in the desert. This system used an arbitrary grid to divide public land for private sale. I paired the shower curtain with the grid of the public land survey system to echo similar sentiments of the strangeness in both and also to insert the human back into the land survey system that seems to discount the individual human over corporate gain.

The PLSS uses rectangular or cadastral survey system to facilitate distribution and transfer of public lands to private ownership. “The artificial structure of the superimposed grid consequently disregarded the nuances of the ecosystems positioned beneath it by ignoring the natural arrangement of wetlands, rivers, hills, and other geological features of a particular landscape.”

(Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing The Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape, 1938-2008 by Kim Stringfellow)