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• 1 2020-04-23T04:28:14+00:00 Tex Serra Wagon Master 10 Denise Johnson essay plain 2020-05-27T23:34:53+00:00 This severity is even more striking in the image, Tex Serra Wagon Master, 2019. The incised rock looks soft and worn, but the surface suggests ruin and disintegration rather than something alluring or comforting to the touch. Some of the names carved are furtive, but most are brash and aggressive. The anguished quality of these marks speak to the frequency with which settlers were driven mad by the monotony of the plains before Devil’s Gate and the astonishing spectacle of the path ahead of Independence Rock. Indeed, Shafer relates that the diary entries of numerous émigrés reflect the desperate circumstances that led them to this path–many had few other options, and describe incapacitating feelings of powerlessness against the forces of both man and nature. Similarly, Shafer describes difficulty in articulating encounters with the sublime when photographing sites with terrible histories. The artist expressed an illogical fear that they were being watched while they worked, assured that the nearest human was miles away, but nonetheless feeling as though they were doing something wrong–a sensation that the artist describes as “the land presenting itself” (interview with the artist). It is likely a feeling that the settlers themselves felt as they entered and traversed the terrain.