New Mexico by Ed Ruscha & Sam Shepard. Published by Lawless Media.
A sentimental favorite while continuing to reconcile with a world no longer inhabited by Sam Shepard. An anodyne to a contentious year in America and shameless nostalgia in revisiting stories from Shepard’s Motel Chronicles. The stories illuminate and become expansive in proximity with Ed Ruscha’s unpublished pictures of New Mexico filling stations that he made while traversing from Oklahoma to LA. The final paragraph from the “3/79 Shiner, Texas” entry from Motel Chronicles is fitting for both men. “Suddenly he appeared to himself. He caught himself in a flash. There was no more doubt who the Character was.”
Honorable Mentions:
Raymond Meeks lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley and is the recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship. His most recent book, ciprian honey cathedral, was published by MACK in Autumn 2020.
www.raymondmeeks.com