Julie Wagner's Studio

My book is titled “Plaza Blanca: House of Cards”. It is a piece about the White Place, or Plaza Blanca, in Abiquiu and is based on a child’s game, “A House of Cards.” I see it in relation to the White Place and the way it is always eroding and changing, how portions of the cliff fall down, rocks weather, and water carves out the arroyos. It is never the same from one season to the next.

I started with two large ink drawings done on site at Plaza Blanca. I then wrote the text of a poem entitled ‘Echo Amphitheater’ by Renee Gregorio on the back. I cut the drawings into 72 cards, ran them through a laminator and then cut slots in them. They can be assembled in an infinite number of ways. There is no right or wrong structure.

ECHO AMPHITHEATER by Renee Gregorio

Water marks spill down the rock face,

deep red on pale orange, spidery dried blood.

This theater’s a bowl of sound,

a ship of air.  The horizon’s upward: a wave-

cloud through blue, trees erupting from stone,

the earth’s boundaries raw, untenable.

All voice is an echo, all sound a stoney return.

Too many shouting at once ends in babble,

the obscure danger behind a siren’s wail.

Short, sharp sounds echo best, the sign says.

A leaf’s softer turning doesn’t reverberate.

Here’s a stage for word’s re-making.

An unoriginal theater giving back

piercing sounds, the brief masks of voice.

"House of Cards: Plaza Blanca"