I once spent New Years Eve in Slab City, near the Salton Sea.  A friend of mine at the time grew up there and would often tell me how it used to be.  He had some family friends who still resided year round in “the slab,” as he called it, so we decided to drive deep out into the California desert and spend our last and first days under the stars. 

Apparently the slab had become an entirely different place since he was a kid in the late 70s early 80s.  Back then it was a community of unsatisfied, disillusioned men and women who, along with their children, took to the “on the road” lifestyle to find something else, somewhere else.  They ended up in an abandoned military base.  It became a village based on goodwill, barter and a commitment to community.  Everyone made something.  The busses they traveled in were converted into homes, and properties decorated with creative constructions comprised of any material they could get their hands on. Every weekend the residents would line the main road with tables full of all they had to offer.  One person’s art would be traded for another’s.  They just made stuff, because they wanted to, and because they enjoyed it.  Art for arts sake was an essential element of everyday life in the slab.  According to my friend this place was a real utopia.  I had to see for myself. 

It was more like a graveyard.  The place he had experienced was vanished, replaced by squatters and junkies.  There were a few old timers who had stayed through the years like Solar Mike, who ran a solar powered company from his bus-converted-home.  There was one artist who resided on the outskirts of the slab who wouldn’t tell us his name.  He was known for being very private, and never let anyone into his cornered domain.  But we were cool with Solar Mike, so we we’re ok.  We three packed into a tiny, deteriorating Indian Tuk Tuk, or solar-powered-homemade-golf-cart as they referred to it, and swiveled our way over to check out this guy’s stuff.  He had over a handful of large scale installations in his yard including a bus that he half buried in the earth, a large “duck pond” made with decorative duck figurines, and a post-apocalyptic elephant creature made of scrap car parts.  This guy, this nameless man, made all of these amazing things and never allowed anyone to see it.

It was all very impressive, and more interesting than half of the artwork in my textbooks or in Los Angeles art galleries.  Maybe he had formal training, maybe he was in dialogue with some discourses relevant to contemporary art.  Or maybe he just didn’t care about any of the rules.  He was tucked away and could do whatever he wanted.  I am currently sitting at my laundromat in Bushwick, in New York, in another slab city.  Watching the transplants stroll through the streets I think about this neighborhood and what it will be someday, and of all the work that goes into living in a place like this, let alone “making it.”  I’m sure they’re all artists, but they all have names.