Carlisle & Gibson
Carlisle and Gibson is a graphic representation of ideas of the American West, as seen through the eyes of a young child. When I was six years old, my family moved to (or in military jargon, was stationed at) Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When my own son turned six, I began to place myself in his head and to remember where I was and what I was thinking and feeling about life and the world around me as a six-year-old. These recollections led to comparisons of the America I knew as a young kid to the America of today. Snakes, jets, and skulls of animals are three things that I remember vividly about growing up in New Mexico. A typical day in the early seventies for my friends and I included playing in the desert, collecting pottery shards, arrowheads, and skulls, and chasing various reptiles while super sonic aircraft boomed overhead. An equally memorable daily event was coming home to find nothing on television but the Watergate trials, though Richard Nixon and his enemies never measured up to Captain Billy’s cartoon hour. This was an unorthodox introduction to politics that I’m sure I share with a lot of people. As war protests and the realization that our parents were the people in the war entered into school conversation, our naïve opinions about the larger world began to take form. Carlisle Avenue and Gibson Boulevard are the intersecting thoroughfares in the Albuquerque of my childhood. Hopefully with a bit of humor, Carlisle and Gibson connects the visual elements of daily life with the emerging political opinions and conclusions about life that people begin make at a young age.
read a commentary by el pelón • view the show on the Stevenson (formerly Villa Julie) College website