Imagining the Past – Teatro Carmen

I love the desert Southwest, wandering through the saguaro forests and the hidden canyons west of Tucson, but occasionally I feel the need for solid pavement under my feet, and that is when I go searching for the region’s historical buildings. Though Tucson is not considered an old city compared to most other cities, it is a city proud of its history.

Teatro Carmen - Street View

Teatro Carmen - Street View © 2012 Bo Mackison

In researching historical buildings in downtown Tucson, I found two resources of interest. First, there is a well established historical walk through the heart of downtown known as the Presidio Trail – also called the Turquoise Trail because one follows a turquoise painted line on the sidewalk to easily go from site to site. The brochure has information about each of the 23 sites and an easily followed map for when the turquoise line on the pavement goes in several directions, leaving trail followers too many choices.

Teatro Carmen - Decorative Painted Window

Teatro Carmen - Decorative Painted Window © 2012 Bo Mackison

One of the sites that is on both the Presidio and the Arizona Women’s walking tours is the Teatro Carmen. This was one of the first theaters in Tucson built to showcase Spanish language dramatic arts. It is named for its founder, Carmen Soto de Vasquez, a businesswomen and cultural leader in Tucson in the early 1900s.

She commissioned a prominent architect/builder, Manuel Flores, to build the theater. The building was designed in the Sonoran Mission style and in the heart of what is now Tucson’s historic district and had its first opening performance in 1915. Carmen Vasquez had the theater built to provide a place for Spanish literary productions as well as operas, musicals and melodramas.

Teatro Carmen - Historic Sign

Teatro Carmen - Historic Sign © 2012 Bo Mackison

Many of the sites along the Presidio Trail are marked with historical signs that provide additional information.

The second reference I used is a fairly new brochure, compiled by a coalition of women’s organizations and historical groups, called the Arizona Women’s Heritage Trail. It was designated a legacy program by the Arizona State Centennial Commission and has twelve sites that highlight a few of the women in early Tucson and their history.

Seven of the sites are on both walking tours, but each map has its own perspective, and so both are useful. There are also many restaurants, outdoor plazas with benches and drinking fountains, and many places you can duck inside for a respite from the Arizona sun if, like me, you choose a 90˚day to re-visit the past with a walk through history.

Teatro Carmen - Window and Reflection

Teatro Carmen - Window and Reflection © 2012 Bo Mackison

Although the building is in a state of partial disrepair, there are still hints of its fine construction and quiet beauty in the remaining details. I love the arches over the pressed window blocks and the brightly painted floral decoration. The painting is not only above the window, but remnants of painted flowers still can be seen on the window glass.

It is amazing to think that through this woman’s efforts a desert town became a cultural center for the arts and brought internationally acclaimed theater to Tucson. She was one of the original arts-instigators in Tucson.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona.

Rays of Sunlight

Rays of Sunlight © 2012 Bo Mackison

Rays of Sunlight © 2012 Bo Mackison

Spiritual and creative journeys are not so much about growing in certainty — in many ways it is about growing less certain — it is about about learning how to move deeply into the heart of mystery, into the great unknown.

During the first few days of each new month, I look for a photograph for Photo-Heart Connection from last month’s photos. I look for one that speaks to me in a special way, perhaps one with a message I overlooked the first time I worked with the photograph. Here is my choice from the many photos I took in March.

I took this photograph of three simply carved chairs in the stunningly decorated church at the Mission of San Xavier del Bac, just south of Tucson, Arizona.  Construction of the church began in 1783 and was completed fourteen years later. It is the oldest intact European structure in Arizona and is a National Historic Landmark.

The church is filled with original, hand carved statuary and murals on many of the walls – many of the murals depict items that could not be obtained in 18th century Arizona. There are paintings delicately rendered as substitutes for wall coverings, draperies, wood, and marbled surfaces.  Dozens of statues were also hand carved, painted, and then finished with materials brought from Spanish missionaries from Mexico into Arizona.

Whenever I take photographs of the Mission at Xavier del Bac or other holy places, I am often filled with a depth of connection and  spirituality that I seldom encounter in other buildings.

When I took this photograph of the sacristy, I was aware of the rays of sunshine illuminating the armrests of two of the chairs. I loved the contrast, the symbolic meaning of light opening a dark space. When I checked the photos on my computer, again the contrast struck me — this time between the ornate — the heavily ornamented walls and niches — and the simple — the carved chairs illuminated by a shaft of light coming through one of the few windows.

It was a photograph that made a heart (and soul) connection.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She has been living in southern Arizona for the last two and a half months, and has taken many photographs of holy and sacred places. She joins other photographers at Kat Eye Studio and posts a photo taken the prior month that “connects with her heart’ during the first few days of the new month.

 


Lessons from Desert Flowers

Rock Gilia

Rock Gilia © 2012 Bo Mackison

       The desert’s beauty suggests patience and struggle and endurance. Even in the brightest colors of its brief spring flowers, there is something austere. ~ from The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch

Most of the desert flowers are mere specks on the ground. If there are dozens of them, the color is fairly noticeable, but if there are only two or three quarter-inch blossoms sprawling against a bit of green leaf and a lot of gravelly desert floor, it takes some careful observations to see those pretty little things. Of course, in the desert, the smaller, the better chance at survival. A flower, or leaf on a shrub for that matter, that is minute requires considerably less moisture for survival than a flower or leaf a hundred times that size. Adaptation of the species, as we know it.

Blooming Aloe

Blooming Aloe © 2012 Bo Mackison

Notice how present a flower is, how it has surrendered to life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Of course, the cacti and the succulents found in the desert have a totally different way to guarantee a flowering season, necessary for the continuation of the species. (No flowers, no seeds. No seed, no new flower).

This aloe is a succulent and has adaptive measures for desert survival. Succulents (and cacti, too) have the ability to suck up water when it does rain and then store it in large quantities. These plants send shallow roots in a wide circumference around the plant, and so the root absorbs the water before it evaporates. And when a succulent, like this bright-orange, flowering aloe, traps water in its system, its waxy surface helps keep the water in the plant and reduces water lost to evaporation.

We humans could learn much by consulting with nature and her ways:

  • Assess our weaknesses and strengths – bolster our weaknesses and play to our strengths.
  • Be resourceful and use our resources wisely. Do not use more natural resources than we need. Consider needs vs. wants.
  • Share your beauty, whether it be small and hidden, delicate and ethereal, or bright and showy.

 

Trees are Sanctuaries

Looking at the Past

Trees are Sanctuaries © 2012 Bo Mackison

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. ~ Herman Hesse

Trees Are Sanctuaries

1806, The People Build the Church

They make the brick, kiln the lime, raise the walls, lay the roof,
paint murals and sacristy ornamentation, build niches for the statues of the Saints.
They clear the land, build the fences, plant corn and wheat,
and from the priests’ cache of pods and seeds, they plant and then tend
fruit orchards, nut trees, and olive trees.
They learn the ways of the missionaries,
they marry, raise children, care for their sick, weep for their dying, bury their dead.

1827, Weary, Ill, and Wary of Raiding Enemies

Many of the People wrap the statuary in leathery strips of yucca,
the bundled saints cradled like newborn babes
protected from summer’s heat, shifting winds, monsoon thunderstorms,
from damage to their wooden limbs or chipped painted robes or eyes of porcelain marbles.
They walk north, leave the Tumacacori Mountains,
settle in another valley with another priest and another church.

1848, Tumacacori Mission, Deserted in the Desert.

No missionary priest leads his people, crucifix in hand,
his carved cross held high, a silhouette in the blue bowl of sky.
No one gives signal to the last few of the Desert People
who now abandon their homes, possessions, crops;
abandon their church, stacked bricks of adobe, and
precious, the limestone wash, white like angels’ wings;
now the church is an apparition towering amidst the desert grasses, agave, mesquite,
standing in the foreground of the mountains.

2012, A View through the Window

Open to the cool desert nights,
no roof for protection, no doors.
Only the ruins remain,  maintained as ruins.
But the window opening frames the cottonwoods, green and tall,
lining the Santa Cruz River, growing.
They hold my fascination. When I walk to the river,
they form the arched roof over my head,
provide a spongy carpet of decaying leaves under my feet.
Wisps of white cottony fluff, seeds for the future, drift on the southwest breeze.

The trees are the sanctuaries.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. There are also days Bo wanders through Mission ruins, thinks of days long past, and writes poetry.

Yucca Candelabra

Yucca Candalabria

Yucca candelabra © 2012 Bo Mackison

Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grasses, brooks . . . We learned to do what only the students of nature ever learn, and that was to feel beauty.    ~ Luther Standing Bear

Yuccas are a common plant in the United States Southwest, so common that it is the state flower of New Mexico.

The leaves of the Yucca are long, narrow, and come to a sharp point. (I have proof – deep scratches on my arms. When will I learn!!)

Fibers of the yucca can be used to make rope and loosely woven textiles. The thick root can be beaten into a lathery pulp which is then used for soap and shampoo. It was a plant that was frequently planted near homesteads and encampments for its usefulness.

When the yucca blossoms, creamy-colored, bell shaped flowers hang in loosely arranged clusters. If the flowers are pollinated, seed-filled capsules develop. The yucca then dies after flowering and fruiting, but produces offshoots that spread out from the mother plant and develop into new plants.

The yuccas only known pollinator is the yucca moth. The female yucca moth has a specialized mouth to collect the pollen.  She lays her eggs in the yucca flower and covers the eggs with a ball of pollen. The pollen fertilizes the seeds which then begin to develop. The moth’s larvae require the yucca seeds for growth and development. Both species, the yucca and the yucca moth, benefit from the exchange. This inter-dependence on each other for survival is termed mutualism.

It is quite a lovely thing, to walk or drive down nearly any street and see the yucca blossoms swinging high in the air, atop the yucca stalk.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She is happy to see  so many plants in bloom.