The May Queen

60” x 48”

Oil and acrylic on panel

“The May Queen” was commissioned by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art as part of Noelle Phares’s 2024 exhibition that focuses on the Colorado River. The piece depicts a view of Lake Powell, a large reservoir impounding the river above Glen Canyon Dam. A sculpture of the Greek goddess of water, Amphritite, stands high above the water, symbolizing the futility of relying on higher powers to protect this precious body of water that is increasingly imperiled as climate change and rising human demand threatens its future availability. 

The poetry composed to accompany this and the other two pieces in the exhibition depicting the Lake Powell area:

“Before the flood
the canyon was eden
fleeced with arches and other intricately sculpted formations.
A drawn out fight led by the Sierra Club
was lost as the Colorado’s waters began to steep 
behind the new walls of Glen Canyon Dam
to form Lake Powell, 
defender of the West against drought and ruin;
the dark backdrop of war in Vietnam casting the 
heroic feat of engineering in a dazzling light.
Now the spring breakers peel across the gathered hems of her surface
beholding her as the May Queen -
emblem of abundance and leisure
bearer of fruits to the irrigated croplands that burst forth 
from her fingertips 
and oh, how the people of St. George must have danced
when first the siphoned water reached them!
But the lake is a bell tower
and her warnings ring clear
“This bounty is fickle!”, moans the bells.
As I stand on the precipice
there hangs above me a great, blackened orb
the aft sphere
bending the light of the midday sun
around its mass.
The orb is, i think, the weight of the water
of what it buried
and of what the bleached shoreline too, foretells:
there is no Amphritite here
no wise overseer
there is only us,
and our dreams.”