Meyers Springs, Pecos River Site 2, Pecos River Site 14, Presa Canyon Vaquero Shelter, Rattlesnake Canyon, and Seminole Canyon Shelter 4, 1935-38

As part of The Blessings of the Mystery, Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas have installed six watercolors by Forrest and Lula Kirkland from a series of 120 created during the 1930s. The artists documented pictographs painted by Indigenous People in the rock shelters of limestone cliffs in Texas, which were threatened by weather, vandalism, and looting. Juan Mancias, Chair of the Esto’k Gna/Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe, describes these pictographs as 4000-year-old prophecies of the coming of “new buildings and new monsters.” The hieroglyphs are seen to represent cranes, power lines, and towers, foretelling the region’s urbanization that has ravaged the land and continues to oppress Native Peoples.

Forrest Kirkland (1892-1942) made his living as a commercial art illustrator in Dallas, Texas. As a hobby, he began sketching the cave paintings around Texas and New Mexico on family outings. Kirkland believed that the existing Native American art works were being vandalized rapidly and he wanted to document them for posterity. Working with his wife, Lula, also an artist, he started making watercolors. After 10 years, they had documented all the rock paintings in Texas. A book of their watercolors was first published by the University of Texas Press in 1967 and was reissued in 1996.