ADAM JAHIEL
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
It was 1974. I must have been 16 years old, and on my first major road trip—driving west to meet my Uncle in Utah and go fishing at Lake Powell. I had a '69 Chrysler Newport 2-door and a buddy of mine who was on his way to Arizona. After I dropped him off in Green River, I headed south all by myself. I remember listening to a tape of Handel's "Water Music" that my mom had given me, and I was driving, and everything was just incredibly big—massive red rocks, vast sky, and you didn't see a soul for hours. That space and solitude just felt right. That's what put the hook in me, and ever since I've had a need for that kind of western space. The West is a world where points on the map are far apart, where the country is vast, the skies huge, and where, in the scale of things, men become insignificant. Out away from town, there are no pay phones, cell phones, computers or backups; nobody to flag down if you run out of gas or water. If you get lost, you're lost. If you're bucked off and your horse runs, you better start walking.
When I was in California I spent a lot of weekends in the Los Padres Mountains above Santa Barbara. My friends had horses and we would ride and rope and go to rodeos—and, of course I took pictures. There was something interesting to me about cowboys and the whole "western" thing—these were people who weren't afraid of getting their hands dirty, who had to deal with animals and weather and nature, and not the artificial environment of a business office or computer laboratory. There is something that I find very compelling and almost Zen-like about ranch hands. They are not caught up in materialism or status seeking. And because their world is limited in distractions, what they do, they do well, completely and thoroughly.
—Adam Jahiel
