Everyone I know in the desert came here in search of some version of personal freedom. When the vast stretches of the American West were first being settled, freedom was often associated with ownership and growth. Owning things and being in charge gave you power, autonomy and independence. But in our contemporary culture now, “ownership” is what actually puts you under the jurisdiction of external systems of authority. In this time of increasing bureaucracy, regulatory codes and administrative agencies, it seems like we are only truly able to find personal liberty by shrinking down to “slip between the cracks” of larger systems and authorities. I like to think of these personal forms of empowerment as “small liberties”.

My own moment of creating small liberties happened about a year after moving into my home in Joshua Tree when I needed to build some simple spaces for people to stay when they came to visit or work on projects. You would think that this desert is a place where you can do or build anything — but in fact this is not true. San Bernardino County is a very large and regulated county, which makes it difficult to get permits to build.

So instead of trying to build something large, I started to research what sorts of structures could be built without asking for “permission” from any outside authority. The resulting Wagon Stations are tiny; 5’x7’ each —the size of tent, with hard exterior shell. They provide a small shelter for sleeping and storing a few basic possessions, and they are totally portable, so they can be carried to almost any location. The name Wagon Station is a nod to both covered wagons and the station wagon (since that was the smallest comfortable place that I could imagine sleeping in.)

I first started prototyping the design for the Wagon Stations in 2002. The first 12 units were scattered across various parcels at A-Z West, but later we moved them into the wash and created the “encampment”. There have been two “generations” of Wagon Stations to date. The first generation were mostly used by my close friends and frequent collaborators — I gave each of them a Wagon Station where they could leave their camping supplies and stay in the same unit each time they came out to visit. They were also invited to customize them, since my works of the 1990s were often fabricated along the lines of mass produced objects and then offered up to “owner-users” for customization.

As a result, each Wagon Station ended up being intensively customized and unique. Eventually however, the units began to to suffer from the harsh desert environment and were either put in storage for safekeeping or sold to institutions. I used the income from the sale of a few of the original units to fabricate a second generation of Wagon Stations that would remain un-customized for people to stay in during our two open seasons each year.

Sometimes people ask about the function of the Wagon Station Encampment — which I like to describe it as a cross between a residency, a retreat and a campground. It is a place where you can step outside of their regular routines, patterns and habits of living and focus on a few basic needs. In my own life I have always found times like this to be important for personal growth and learning. I don’t always see productivity as being “productive” — instead, it is those down periods of being totally open to new experiences and input that can often be the most life changing.

The Wagon Station Encampment residency ran until Fall 2017.