New Mexico

Ellen said it when the plane approached Albuquerque, "It seems like another country." The land is foreign to Easterners like us where the sky is expansive and the horizon exists all around you in all directions, where trees grow squat and grass is brown in clumps, not green and lush. The dry air conspires with the sun to mock the thermometer reading. Forty degrees on a cloudless morning is toasty. Shadows are deeper and they silhouette objects in sharp relief. Another country? This seems another planet.

The remoteness makes it an easy place to hide things (Los Alamos is the home of the atomic bomb). Yet things are made for everyone to see (it is the home of major movie productions). Artists make art and scientists make computer chips, all here in New Mexico.

Natural beauty is viewed as far as the eye can see, with big sky all around and it is hidden beneath the earth in caverns.

It is no wonder that visual artists unleash their talent here.