Sprawling art festival begins in desert Southwest on Saturday

High Desert Test Sites, a traveling art festival that sprawls 700 miles at various sites from Albuquerque to Joshua Tree, Calif., will begin Saturday and runs through Oct. 19.’

However, at least three of the sites — Amboy Crater, Petrified Forest National Park, and a Bureau of Land Management campground near Kingman — are closed because of the government shutdown. If the shutdown persists into the weekend, keep that in mind with your travel plans.

Several of the stops are on Route 66:

  • Amboy Crater, Amboy, Calif.
  • Kelbaker Road, Amboy, Calif.
  • Area 66, Yucca, Ariz.
  • East Kingman, Kingman, Ariz.
  • Hilltop Motel, Kingman, Ariz.
  • BLM Marker 7123A , Kingman, Ariz.
  • Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.
  • El Rancho Hotel, Gallup, N.M.
  • San Mateo and Central, Albuquerque
  • Frontier Restaurant, Albuquerque

A full schedule and map can be downloaded here.

The fellow who alerted me to this arts festival is Alex Kenefick. He and Julianna Parr will post their DocuMART installation at the Hilltop Motel. Here’s the description:

DocuMART™ is an installation involving a low-overhead, illicit permitting and papers office.  DocuMART™ will be at the Hill Top Motel at 1901 E Andy Devine Avenue in Kingman, AZ (Route 66) for the full duration of HDTS 2013. DocuMART™ focuses on citizenship, marriage equality, freedom, governance and, humanization of the individual. Bridging the gap between standard paperwork procedures and the essence of humanity, our office processes and matriculates people into a system.

The words that come to mind are “satire” and “whimsy.”

One thought on “Sprawling art festival begins in desert Southwest on Saturday

  1. We had a group of artists and followers at the Hill Top Motel last evening. I got a chance to look at some of the documentation for this event and was really impressed with it’s scope. If this event is passing through your area, take advantage of the opportunity.

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