| Cave Notes | Southwest Photographic |
Cave Notes
"Work in Progress" - 6/95, Embudo, N.M.
In
an attempt to avoid repeating myself, I present this brief history in
response to the questions I am continually asked about my Cave Project
in Embudo:
I
grew up in Santa Fe which was then a small dusty village with a mostly
Hispanic population. My father built a house way out of town, surrounded
only with open prairie and mountain vistas, which is now near the intersection
of St. Francis Drive and San Mateo Road! I went away to a military high
school and then college. After several majors in the sciences I began
studying Art and was quickly rewarded as a painter. I exhibited mostly
in New York and California and taught at several colleges. I moved back
to New Mexico to take care of my parents who had long term health problems.
I
originally bought about 40 acres with an old adobe in Embudo in late
1986 so that some friends could have some land to homestead. As I began
to fix up the property, which we named "Paradise", I found
the place to be an essential retreat from the crazy development in Santa
Fe. I have always been a workaholic and Embudo offered an endless variety
of problems to solve. The Cave began as a solution to one of those problems.
The
original old adobe was set into a very steep sandy hill which would
erode into the back wall of the house when it rained. I bought a backhoe
and began moving the hill back away from the house. While pushing the
dirt around the house to make the terraces in front, I began digging
a small cave into the cliff with the backhoe. I had no plan at that
time except to explore and perhaps to create a small cool storage space.
This was around the end of 1987 when I brought my friends, Ottmar and
Stefan Liebert, out from Boston. For entertainment we would dig in the
hill.
Over
the next year I began fixing up the house, and since the cliff wall
that I had created remained stable, I decided to incorporate it into
my house. Reagan was President and the showdown with Russia prompted
me to see the cave as a potential shelter. So I brought in the essentials
for living underground: air, water, and solar power.
The
geology in the Embudo area is primarily the result of one of the Earth's
largest volcanoes. The Jemez mountains are what remains of its base.
I have had conflicting opinions on the various time lines, but basically
the "sand" in the cave is tufa which is the accumulated volcanic
ash from hundreds of thousands of years, settling to the bottom of what
was a giant lake bed. The tufa is at least two thousand feet deep in
the area. The basalt lava rock you see on the surface was scattered
around the world when the volcano finally blew up. The reason you see
some of this rock deep beneath the surface is because the Rio Grande
follows a large fault line and earthquakes broke and shifted the area
many times. Thus in the cave you will also see the strata broken and
shifted and set about at many angles off of its horizontal origins.
The small white deposits are accumulations or early animal (sea) life
and the clay (dark reddish brown) layers are from periods of vegetation
when the volcano must have been dormant.
The
area behind the house where I started the cave was dry and faulty and
the walls would cave in on me. So I dug the cave in circles so I would
have a way out, in case of a cave in, and I reinforced the walls with
rebar, remesh, stucco netting and concrete which is now painted white.
The process of reinforcement involved the efforts of many workers and
became prohibitively expensive, so I worked on developing areas and
spaces that would function without reinforcement. So far the cave has
cost about $70,000, mostly for labor. In fact much of the cave has been
created to give work to local people in need. As many as fifty different
people have worked in the cave. Most of the actual digging (excepting
myself) has been performed by Robert Paulette (A.K.A "Ra")
who is well known for his own cave which was on the mesa above. Based
on the total paid hours I have calculated that the actual digging only
amounts to one man working 40 hours a week for about 100 weeks. The
costs have been low considering the amount of space involved. I do not
know how many square feet the cave occupies, or the cubic volume of
the earth removed, but the cave covers over an acre and a half horizontally
and sixty feet vertically. An interesting fact is that for every cubic
foot of cave created, three cubic feet of earth are taken out to be
disposed of. In fact the removal and disposal are more work than the
actual digging. The excavated dirt has been useful for various building
purposes including walls, floors, terraces and roads.
The
overall design has changed many times to effect different purposes.
Since I had no intention of going this far with the project when I began,
the process of development has been necessarily organic and often changing.
For instance, I started out making a storage space and each time I expanded
the cave I planed to put in storage. But each storage space has become
something else: a bedroom, a sound space, a meditation chamber, a gallery
etc. The cave reflects my own challenge to find a balance between my
needs for functional assets vs. creative or fantasy experiences. This
may explain why I cannot see any part of the cave as finished. The cave
always offers me far more questions than answers. There are very few
parts of the cave that I do not plan to change. As a painter intrigued
with appearances and illusion, the whole cave appears to me as a blank
canvas at this point.
Functionally
the cave is designed to serve two primary purposes: One is to provide
a comfortable non-consuming living climate. By tying my living space
to the earth there is a wonderful moderating influence on temperature
and humidity. I do not tolerate heat well, and in an area where summer
daily temperatures generally exceed 100°F in the shade, the cave
offers relief with an average of 60°. Because of the great mass
of the hill, the cave reaches its maximum average temperature (about
64°) around December and its minimum (about 52°) in May. (The
native temperature of the ground here, whether 5 or 50 feet below the
surface, is about 50-52° with a frost-line of only a few inches!
Who said the Earth was 55°?) Because I am located on a south facing
slope and narrowing point in a valley, I can use the prevailing air
currents to heat or cool the house by opening or closing doors or vents.
The cave provides an ideal humidity level to the house of around 60%,
which is especially rare and beneficial in the New Mexico winters. Also,
since I originally built my house as a retreat which would be vacant
for long periods of time, the cave gives the house energy self- sufficiency
with a record low temperature of 50° during a month long absence
in the depths of winter and a high of 82° (except when people leave
the doors open during the summer!).
The
second primary function of the cave design evolves from my ideal for
a residence: That is to provide 24 hour functionality and privacy to
each type of living space. Since I am an inconsistent insomniac and
workaholic, I like to be able to use each space whenever and however
I want without disrupting the "normal" patterns of others.
Therefore the ends of the cave (north/south/east/west) are where the
"bedrooms"(4-6 private spaces) are to be located. Unfortunately,
at this point, I have been unable to complete any of the bedrooms because
I need to use the exits (entrances) to the cave for moving the large
quantities of material in and out of the cave.
Obviously
I am involved with less functional aspects of the cave project, like
stimulating the imagination and experience of others. At this point
I see the cave as an Art experience/ museum in a world that is losing
(or ignoring) its creative imagination/soul. In today's rectangular
compartmentalized world I hope you will discover here the curvy maze
of your unconscious. I also hope you will explore the magic of my land/environment,
over the mesa and along the river, which actually attracts and stimulates
more of my creative time and energy than the cave. If not for the night
and the extremes of climate, I would probably put most of my time in
Embudo into the landscape instead of the underground.
My
greatest challenge/interest is determining what is possible within each
area of the cave that I encounter. Each area presents it own characteristics
and problems, and ultimately lessons and suggestions for inquiry. The
material has taught me what I can or can not do. For instance, the prevailing
oval shape of the caves results from the mountain roughly forming that
shape when weak areas collapsed. The arabesque ceilings resulted from
the need to create conduits for the power and lights. The deeper I go,
the softer, dryer, and thus less stable the tufa becomes. The detailed
carving of the West caves is possible because they are close to the
surface and are therefore wetter and denser. This allowed me greater
latitude to explore various styles and esthetics and create spaces for
some of my art collection. Most recently my daughter Scarlet, and her
friends, with their games of Hide-n-Seek and Chase and primitive carvings,
have had the greatest influence on my designs, such as giving each space
at least two exits. I work to create as many different kinds of experiences
as the cave will allow, though I do not wish to define what those experiences
should be. I feel it is important that each person be allowed to develop
their own unique responses. Therefore I choose to keep my personal (spiritual)
experiences to myself.
Like
any sculptural material, the mountain defines the limitations within
which I must work, and each part of the cave suggests its own possibilities
for development. Over the years the project has evolved from a simple
survival concept to a functional design process, and finally an exploration
of my esthetics and fantasies. It has become a search for possibilities
and potential relationships within my way of perceiving and understanding.
I am motivated primarily by my curiosity and my need to work creatively,
both mentally and physically. The cave offers me an endless process
of self discovery. I could say that I am not making the cave, but rather
the cave is making me. What you see is just a beginning, like the stretching
of a canvas to be painted upon: work in progress!
MER
By: Don Werthmann
Writer, Southwest Photographic
Fall 1996
Calvin Klein found them so photogenic
he picked them for a fashion shoot. PBS considered them unique enough
for a documentary. Even so, the basalt and tufa caves in Embudo, New
Mexico - dug by an eccentric artist who prefers to be known only by
his initials MER - are one of northern New Mexico's best kept secrets.
MER started digging into the cliffs behind his old adobe home in Embudo
in 1987. What began as a simple hole that could serve as cold storage
for vegetables, expanded into a bomb shelter on which he staked his
very survival during the Reagan-Bush years. Eight years later, the labyrinthian
home meanders over an acre and half of land, measured horizontally,
and sixty feet vertically. A mind-bending shape-shifting artwork itself,
it also serves as an informal art museum, displaying works by Terry
Allen, Angelica Baesch, John Connell and other artists whose pieces
are too erotic, too political or just too tough for ordinary venues.
Although MER seeks no publicity, nearly
everyone who stops by the microbrewery at Embudo Station hears about
his project. Strangers wander in, especially during the summer when
MER formally opens the place on Sundays.
Although its earliest parts are reinforced with rebar, remesh, stucco
netting and concrete painted white, MER now digs in areas that need
no reinforcement. To date, the cave has cost about $70,000, mostly for
labor, with a lot of the work being done by a friend with the Egyptian
name of RA. MER has no idea how many cubic feet have been shoveled out
so far but says that he "removes three cubic feet of earth for
every one cubic foot of space. Explain that!" A self-declared "insomniac
and workaholic," MER continues to carve out womb-like bedrooms,
meditation chambers, lofts and tunnels, most of which are lit by day
with skylights and portholes. It's a work in progress in which any part
may be altered at any time.
"As a painter intrigued with appearances
and illusion, the whole cave appears to me as a blank canvas,"
he says.
And a sacred space for meditation, fantasy
and renewal. As for the meaning of those initials, MER, they stand for
the initials of the artist's given name-and more. The word "mer"
denotes counter-rotating fields of light and is well known to New Age
followers of the ancient Egyptian mystery schools as a component of
the spinning star tetrahedron called the MerKa-Ba, a time-space vehicle
that can transport beings to other dimensional levels.