Travel Postcard: U.S. HWY89.
The earth has begun to reclaim most of the parking lots in Gray Mountain but for now it remains in the early stages of decay. As I sweat through perfecting a shot a group of people stop to inspect the apocalyptic scene; an abandoned hotel and gas station. Then I hear windows begin to break. It's hard not to be irritated. You can't help but wonder, do they feel comfortable because it's abandoned on indigenous land or do they just feel comfortable? (If you have to ask yes they were and yes, they were).
Over the last 30 years I've passed Gray Mountain a thousand times while traveling to Page. What seemed like a decent business dwindled over the years, parking lots emptied and the vibrant southwestern paint faded. Not long after art work began to appear on the boarded up gas station. Every few years a installation would be completely made anew. Though most of the artist's names or handles are hard to find, @jetsonorama remains a constant presence with large black & white large format prints depicting Diné life. It's a reminder that our assumptions of creative life; a thing thought to be mostly cloistered in large cities, are deeply flawed and the existence of rural and indigenous artists, if not next to a major highway, mostly go unnoticed. The people breaking windows and taking selfies in the abandoned rooms never came near the art work. Maybe to them even if it's on an abandoned building its still just "graffiti".