Letter from an Artist: Catching Magic in the Los Padillas Water Catchment Project

October 11, 2004: from the journal of Chrissie Orr, Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it is raining.

If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water. — Loren Eisley

Thousands have lived with out love, not one without water. —W. H. Auden

Humanity has not only lost touch with the spiritual nature of water, but is now in danger of losing its very physical substance. —Theodor Schwenk

The Los Padillas Water Catchment Project. Photo by Chrissie Orr. View slideshow of additional images.

It all started with a message on the kitchen answering machine. It was John’s voice. “How would you like to do another water-catchment project, but this time build it? I have money for you.” I stood and listened to it twice. How often does this happen to an artist? I had not hustled this, I had not spent hours struggling over a proposal, I had just mentioned to my friend John that I would like to expand a project we had worked on together the previous summer.

John McLeod is one of those renaissance human beings, with a visionary mind and incredible energy who loves to get his hands in the mud. He is, among many other wonders, the coordinator of “Bridging to the Arts,” http://www.bridgingtothearts.org/ an innovative arts program developed for youth summer projects in New Mexico.

In the summer of 2003, John hired me to drive to 17 sites around the state — from Ship Rock on the Navajo Nation to Sunland Park on the U.S./Mexico border to the war zone (so called because of frequent gang shooting) in Albuquerque – where I ran school workshops on the intrigues and mysteries of catching water in the arid southwest. The students became inventors and we designed hundreds of different catchment systems, many of which Rube Goldberg would have loved. At the end of the summer, as John and I worked together to produce a book of the designs, we both came to the conclusion that some of the concepts should have been built, hence the message on my answering machine.

Now, a year later, I would work with another group of kids, design a water catchment system and actually build it. Of course, as everybody in this field knows, nothing is as easy as it appears.

The project, or rather the funding, was directed over to the Rio Grande Educational Collaborative in Albuquerque. They picked a site called Los Padillas in the south Rio Grande valley — hotter than hell in the summer and swarming with mosquitoes. I did not hear from anyone until a week before they wanted the project to start. Then I had to get fingerprinted for a background check before they would let me work with the kids, standard operating procedure in the Albuquerque School District. You will be pleased to know that I passed.

I hustled a budget together, worked out a schedule, put out the word that I was looking for an intern/assistant. I contacted Ann Nelson, a landscape designer who specializes in designing for kids, and Richard Jennings, a water engineer-cum-visionary inventor, and convinced them that they could fit in a few hours to their busy schedules to come and work with me. I ran in circles, panicked a few a times, designed workshops and bought materials, and eventually all the pieces began to fall into place.

It was about four days before the start of the project when I met Rose Simpson for the first time. I had interviewed her by telephone and we had arranged to meet in the local underground coffee house. Rose has just turned 20, is part Santa Clara Pueblo Indian and part Anglo, grew up on the pueblo learning to grow food, look after animals and make pots. Not easy in this dry land. She understood the importance of and respect for water. She pointed out that she was taught the traditions and the language of her ancestors and now she was living in the big city of Albuquerque and making a success as a hip-hop spoken-word artist. She was perfect for the position of assistant. We drank coffee and laughed and worked out a schedule around preparations she was making with the pueblo to dance at an upcoming feast day.

It was one of those incredibly hot, dry days when Rose and I first met the kids in Los Padillas. We spread a tarp out under a tree, gathered the kids, introduced ourselves, talked about the water cycle and started playing with plastic drainpipes, connectors, buckets and water. The kids ranged from the age of five to 12, were all from different backgrounds, Anglo, Hispanic, Mexican, Native American and Japanese. Some could not speak English. By the end of the day all were soaking wet, one had fallen headfirst into a garbage can, two had slipped and were covered in mud, but all were smiling.

Los Padillas Elementary School is set in the south valley of Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico. It is a small rural area near the Rio Grande, where farmers grow, in fertile land, chile, corn and vegetables for the family. There is old-growth Bosque (riverside vegetation), ancient cottonwood trees and tamarisk. In between the farms are tire shops, feed stores that sell pigs and peacocks, backhoe services, panaderias and an ice-cream shop selling aqua de melon. It is like little Mexico. There are still families that live up on the mesa who haul water and have no electricity. The school is small and gentle and is staffed by concerned, innovative teachers. Ten years ago a group of them set about to form a wildlife sanctuary behind the school. They built a wetlands area and redirected the grey water from the school, where it is cleaned by biological removal, then pumped using solar energy to a pond that is now filled with lotus, bulrushes, exquisite dragonflies and frogs. It was in this wildlife area that the principal and teachers decided they wanted the water-catchment project. It was problematic: no roof to catch water, difficult access, apart from narrow walkways, hot and full of mosquitoes.

Rose and I walked the sanctuary many times, found a suitable site and continued working with the kids. We had them drawing from nature, looking at the way plants and leaves catch water. The lotus leaves were perfect examples. They learnt about berms and swales, filters pumps, siphons, gravity, flow forms and the delight and magic of playing in water. We used all this information in the designs. The kids were given huge pieces of paper, oil pastels and watercolor pastels and directed to play at being inventors. The designs came intuitively. Kids connectively use their bodies and their minds. They wiggle as they draw, they poke their neighbors as they draw, they squeal and stand on their heads and roll and feel the flow of water as they draw. The designs were innovative, fresh and fun.

It was at this time that we realized that another person on the project would really help. I was to be out of town for a few days for a project in Seattle, so I talked with a friend’s son, Gabe. I had run into him at an opening and he told me that he was working at getting his permaculture certificate (permanent agriculture, to work with nature rather than against it) and was still studying in the art department in the University of New Mexico. It turned out that he knew Rose and had time to commit to the project. He immediately became part of the team.

Gabe and Rose found with some amazing white clay, and with small, clear plastic tubing and toothpicks and sticks, the drawings were turned into models. We experimented with them to see how the water would flow into the structure and where it would be stored.

Suddenly it was the end of the summer program, the kids were whisked away by happy parents and we promised that when they came back to school in September we would have a structure built to install in the sanctuary. Kids are so trusting.

Now it was time for me to really get down to work. I took all the designs and models and played with them in the studio. I used what I saw to make my own drawings, experimented and changed ideas and had ongoing discussions with Rose and Gabe. The design had to use ideas from the kids, function, visually work with the site and be within the budget, which was small.

I chose a bowl-shaped design and showed my drawings to a friend, Rico Eastman, who is a master metal worker. I prayed that he would say that it could technically be built. Unfortunately, it could not be done in the budget range. I thought that I would have to go back to the drawing board until he told me that there was a possibility we could use the ends of propane tanks for the bowl shapes. He called a friend in Phoenix and the next day we were in the truck heading south. The bowls were perfect. There was one bowl three feet in diameter, one four-foot, and one five-foot: just what we needed. The world was working for me. It took a forklift, a crane, two heavy-duty men, sweat, money, a lot of faith and a dog to fit the bowls in the back of the truck. I held my breath as the springs on the truck sank. It was a long journey home, and of course we had not thought about how to get the damn things back out of the truck.

We did, but it was a struggle, with a lot of pushing and shoving and my friend Rico’s ingenuity. We moved the heavy bowls into various positions, poured water into the structure, watched it flow and eventually came up with technical solutions. The building process took a few weeks of change and discovery until we all agreed. During this time we explored the joy of using the structure not only as a water-catchment devise but also as a musical instrument. The bowls worked like bells and, dependent on how much water was in each bowl, one could produce different sounds. The water would allow the vibrational patterns to flow through it, alchemically forming droplets that flew out of the confines of the bowl into the air. As we made many interesting discoveries I understood we had designed not only a water catchment, but also an incredible educational structure to show the magical properties of water.

As Rico was building the structure, Gabe and Rose and I designed the landscaping and started to prepare the site. As we were doing this, I realized I had not taken into account how we were going to transport the structure into the wildlife area. The only paths were narrow walkways. However, the principal assured me there was a secret way through the deep weeds. I went ahead and ordered tons of rock and stone and gravel to be delivered to the site, and thought that the gravel truck would create the path for us to go in later with the smaller pickup. Little did I know that the gravel-truck driver would arrive in a brand-new, shiny white truck and refuse to drive through the weeds in case he scratched his new paintwork? So the tons of rock and stone were dumped at the edge of the sanctuary. Luckily we had a lot of kid energy to help us move the rocks painfully one by one to the site. The wheelbarrow full of gravel was a challenge to the older boys but we could not stop them, even at lunchtime.

After the site had been leveled and prepared, Rico and I loaded cranes and hoists and winches onto the back of a trailer, hauled all down the highway to the site and prayed that we would not get all stuck in the weeds. It was a long day of blind faith — mixed with expertise, patience and trust — to move the structure. We laughed and shouted and worked hard in the hot sun. Eventually it was placed solidly in position and we stood back, knowing that we'd better like it because there was no way to move it again.

Gabe and I spent time finishing the landscaping and organizing the first group of kids to come and play. I knew we had created something special. The kids loved it, they were engaged, asked questions and began to understand what they had been experiencing all summer in our workshops.

The dedication took place a week ago. The whole school came out, all the children carrying containers full of water. Frank Leto, a steel-drum player, made a special composition to play on the structure, kids talked about their experiences working on the project and Rose performed a water poem. The kids filled the structure with water, caused beautiful chaos and many smiles. The event was attended by teachers, parents, neighbors, two television crews, a newspaper photographer, two foals, a duck, a goose and a rooster. It was a wild success.

Now I am putting a small book together with photographs, writings and poetry from the kids. We found a little extra funding for Rose and Gabe to run workshops after school to create some poetry stones that will get placed in the walk way and we are planning to slowly keep adding to the project. It could and should be one of those projects that grow organically from the seeds that we have sown, and I hope that it will.

The mysteries of water continue. It has rained here in the desert and the water catchment structure has begun its process, singing and vibrating the patterns of nature. The cycle is running. The alchemy spreads.

Respect and thank you to John McLeod, Rose Simpson, Gabe Romero, Rico Eastman, Chris Wells, Ann Nelson, Richard Jennings, Frank Leto, Andrea Barka, Sara Keeney and teachers at Los Padillas Elementary School, Linda Jackson, Irma Ruiz and staff at Rio Grande Educational Collaborative and to all the kids who reminded me of the pleasures of play.

Chrissie Orr, a native of Scotland, has created community-based projects in Australia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Mexico and the U.S. She was co-director of Arran Community Arts Project, Isle of Arran, Scotland, and Community Artist for East Lothian. She founded the Teen Project in Santa Fe, N.M., and the Bridge Project, which addressed issues on the border between El Paso, Tex., and Juarez, Mexico. Orr is currently core faculty at the Ecoversity in Santa Fe, N.M. In 2004, she is working on a project with Samoan youth in Seattle, Wash., and is putting together a book about the Los Padillas project.

Original CAN/API publication: November 2004