Modern Lore LE: A Ghost Town
A Ghost Town
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Art installations started popping up in Rhyolite in 1984, long before deserts were dreamy, sun-bleached backdrops for A-list artists’ Instagram feeds. When I visited the ghost town, I was hoping to see mining relics dulled in layers of dust, or advertisements for the local bank and brothel broken up by chipped paint, or eaten away by termites. I had no idea that I would be facing Albert Szukalski’s The Last Supper, a ghostly line of fiberglass sculptures reenacting DaVinci’s masterpiece.
The white shrouded figures line up along a platform, bodies thrust askew by the uneven landscape. Szukalski’s ghosts are created from negative space, invisible creatures defined by their outlines. Arms outstretched, they look like oversized children playing dress-up on Halloween; the parents on a budget, throwing blankets over their kids’ heads and telling them to collect candy alone.
Atlas Obscura
Near them kneels Lady Desert The Venus of Nevada, an oversized, boxy Lego woman by Dr. Hugo Heyrman. She’s faceless, but holds herself upright from the knees up to show off her protruding bright yellow bush. She’s an ode to Sheri’s Ranch, the brothel in Pahrump I saw the day before, where a single mother from Minnesota showed Daisy and I around, practically begging to give us a tour.
Google Images
The house mother at Sheri’s wouldn’t let Daisy and I eat our lunch at a bar. It was directly in sight of new customers, and she didn’t want us, casually dressed in our road trip wear, to be mistaken for employees. I ate a half-decent hamburger in a booth near the bathroom and watched as a few regulars trickled in, beelining for the bar to get their lunch, not saying a word about seeing a Venus of Sheri’s.
2015