Between *Here & Cool

It all started with a title. Like Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Between Here and Cool arose out of a phrase stuck in my head like a bull nettle stuck to my sock. (Rub cow manure on a bull nettle sting, my grandmother would say.) I had to do something with it, and I needed a creative dissertation project like I needed oxygen. Graduate student travel grants were being offered through the university; I drafted a proposal and applied for the grant with no intention of actually receiving it—with no intention of actually having to follow through with, well, anything. There was no concern for the logistics: single, thirty-something mother seeks to travel more than 4,000 miles and across 15 states in 2010 Prius in bold attempt to document the great American landscape on a great American road trip—alone. But someone, or some committee, thought it just might work. For 18 days, I drove: traveling the back roads and blue highways, it was 5,926.4 miles between here and Cool—between Cool, Texas; Cool, California; Cool, Iowa; and home again. Boldly, and sometimes foolishly, I encountered the American landscape and its dreams, pushing my own automobility far beyond what I ever thought possible on the road (actual and metaphorical). In the grand tradition of the American road story, I documented my experience through image and text, relic and road-trip ephemera. This happened: 1 moving violation (warning); 30 minutes at a Border Patrol checkpoint; 2 more Border Patrol checkpoints; 1 wedding ceremony; 1 friend’s birthday (missed); 18 souvenir t-shirts; 22 souvenir coffee mugs (Wyoming has the best coffee mugs.); 1 evening worrying about the upcoming 3 days in the Grand Canyon; 3 days in the Grand Canyon; 1 Firestone 15" 195/65R15 tire (flat); 2 mechanics; 29 postcards; 46 (roughly) dropped calls; 1/4 lb of Green’s Creek Gruyere (I left my cheese in Marfa.); 17 stops for gas; 14 motel beds; 54 meals; 6 cameras; 56 rolls of film; more than 1 way to go; more than 1 dead end. And I have proof. Confession: this project has been the thorn in my side for almost three years now. After returning from an 18-day trip, processing over 700 photographs (and innumerable experiences), defending my PhD dissertation (and innumerable experiences), and finally mounting a solo exhibition in the summer of 2013, I still can’t shake it. There must be more to say with image and text and object than one exhibition can bear—like the swell at the cutbank, like the last drop before your spiritual cup overfloweth. And so I’m going to sit a while longer in this work and let the story continue to tell itself, from photographs of forgotten signs to fast food sacks on display, from vinyl text to visual narrative. I will float the Brazos River in October, taking what I learned on the road and strapping it into the belly of a canoe in hopes that the same mishaps and miscellany that happened before, the same spirit of survival and adventure that carried me between here and Cool, will emerge once again victorious and alive. My name is Diane, and this is a true story. I am an artist, writer, mother, marathoner, doctor of philosophy, university professor, budding grammarian, coffee enthusiast, former cyclist, armchair soccer-style kicker, and avid adventurer from the great state of Texas. This is what I saw while I was on the road, some of what has happened since, and so on, and so on...