Bitter Springs

Navajo on the Road: Jetsonorama from Moenkopi Wash to Bitter Springs

October 6, 2012 Artists

There is a stretch of highway from Bitter Springs to Moenkopi Wash where you might slow down or stop all together to take a look into the eyes of a Navajo. They are there looking at you. Artist and photographer Jetsonorama is telling more stories out here about the Navajo people and their neighbors in black and white poster-sized wheatpastes.

Jetsonorama. Owen. (photo © Jetsonorama)

The portraits, snapshots of life, and representational scenes are telling you their stories, even if you didn’t ask a question. The sun-baked creases on their faces are maps of roads you may have traveled but probably not. Serene, apprehensive, jovial, content, resigned, pensive, beautiful – that’s how these individuals are captured and blown up; a way of life on display for the world to see.

Jetsonorama. Ben. “Water is Life” (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorama. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorma at Bitter Springs

July 31, 2012 Artists

Doing Street Art projects is easier than you think. And harder than you think. Just because you can conceive of the 5 easy steps that it takes to get there, you still have to do those steps. Jetsonorama is continuously commingling his interests in community, medicine, sociology, photography, and public art – in a part of the country not known for streets, let alone Street Art.

“I spent all day sweating, hanging out with people from the community and a buddy from Flagstaff who helped me get pieces up,” Jetsonorama says of his latest project is in Bitter Springs, Arizona, a community where he also serves as a doctor on a reservation. His new action-blurred photographs are less about portrait and more about poetry on the rugged facades in this part of the country. Horses are more of a focus in his work also, as they figure prominently into the history of the people, as well as the present. With help from people in the community, Jetsonorama enables conversations to start and stories to be told through art and photography.

Jetsonorama. Bitter Springs, Arizona. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Read more about Jetsonorma’s work with the Navajo Nation in the current Issue of The Utne Reader Magazine.

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