CHRISTINA MESITI
...is an artist living in public land throughout the western US.
You can see my objects:
SCULPTURE
You can read/learn/hike with me:
EMPLACEMENT SOCIETY
You can message me:
CONTACT
You can visit the Birdhouse:
Coming soon
...is an artist living in public land throughout the western US.
You can see my objects:
SCULPTURE
You can read/learn/hike with me:
EMPLACEMENT SOCIETY
You can message me:
CONTACT
You can visit the Birdhouse:
Coming soon
CURRENTLY
Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange
David Gutierrez
Jennifer Calivas
Last Updated 24.10.31
MATTERS
Crystal Clock, 2026
Ponderosa pine resin melted with charcoal, obsidian, sandstone with quartz cavity, petrified wood, crystalized petrified wood, pit fired micaceous clay
36” x 24” x 6”
Lest you think I spent the whole residency wandering in the dirt, I also made some sculpture, and you can see more of it on my main website.
Giant petrified logs, eroded round like any boulder on a ridge, yet up close they give the undeniable sense of log, wood:
-concentric rings
-crust of bark
-lamination, slices
-splintering
-cross-section after cross-section
It seemed to always be the slice that showed you “log” and this gave me much food for thought about sculptural moves for larger work, materials hinting at former bodies.
I collected a lot of ideas for bigger work for when I get to Galveston for the year...structures to organize casual, easy movements around. I collected a few new fossils and lots of P. wood too.
Some geology facts:
Petrified wood forms when a tree dies and becomes quickly buried before it rots. Sediment collects in the cellular spaces of the log hardening while the carbon matter of the original wood decays. What’s left is a one-to-one cast of the tree on a cellular level.
Sam, a choreographer, is working on a piece in the area where the logs are, where her father’s ashes are scattered, and where she wanted to see the movement of lots of hair falling across stone.
I also wandered the Bighorn Mountains and collected examples of what I think of as “forest logic”, moments of shapes and textures holding and gathering other textures. I’m using these as examples inspiring big new work to come.
Canyonlands Research Center, Utah
Racking is using logs to catch debris in flash floods. It is a part of the Indian Creek stream restoration at the Dugout Ranch. These log jams push the stream banks out, spreading out the water laterally, thus keeping the stream from incising deeper into the earth and pushing the water table lower.
What a massive sculpture, letting materials push and catch the force of other materials.
At the residency, we made paper from invasive plants, pigment from ochers and iron in the earth. Each night the almost and then full moon rose behind the prow of red sandstone and we all stood in the middle of the ranch together chatting and waiting for it.
What a privilege to listen to and learn from such an interdisciplinary perspective on Bears Ears: ranchers, activists, artists, dancers, writers, and Navajo and Ute community members.
I printed a centerfold of desert work to trade with other artists! I liked how it turned out and will mail one to you for $15. Check it out here under the Emplacement Society Publications
- Returned to the boulder that dropped me in Posos last year
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Let my cycle return to me
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Led a few pitches again with good friends
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Scavenged for pinion pine resin
- Left some real old stories at the pond by the magic quartzite
Excited for 39:
Throwback to November 2025 at a studio spot near the Bears Ears, SE Utah
Arizona’s last wetland
On top of the biggest untapped copper bodies in the country
As of 3.16.2026, this land, sacred to the Apache people, is now officially owned by Resolution Copper They plan to use a method called “block cave mining” which would turn Oak Flat into a two mile-wide crater 1000 feet deep.
Protect Chi'chil Biłdagoteel
Read more about Oak Flat here and here
Emplacement Society gathering
We bouldered, we relaxed, we roamed into the springs and canyons below the flats without trails. Alice said her skin looked like “an art project” after all the bushwacking. I said it was exfoliation: shrub spa
Jen taught us how to make string from the invasive buffel grass.
Joshua brought us the best snacks and more coffee.
The first landscape I backpacked as a wee 19 year old
Ankle is doing better!
Bird
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