Railroad Signal, Highway and Sky Near the Intersection of 129 Rd, Spearville, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50, October 18, 2014

Railroad Signal, Highway and Sky Near the Intersection of 129 Rd, Spearville, Kansas,
U.S. Highway 50, October 18, 2014, 2023
acrylic on a shaped rag board panel, artist-made frame
4 11/16 x 20 5/16 x 1 5/8 inches

 

It is kind of surprising that I could place this image as precisely as I have. There isn’t much to go on. It could be any place on the plains. As I traveled, I detailed how I photographed each town along the way. However, in the in-between places, it is difficult to pinpoint the significance of a stop. There are no mountain or valleys to frame the rotation of the sun. The highway is position less as a landmark. Adrift, a turn of the horizon reveals a circular world of railroad tracks, cultivated fields, solitary barns, scant gatherings of trees, sheltered dwellings, vanishing rows of utility poles, and the sky.  

 

Although I find anything to with a highway intriguing, I never saw railroad signals as a means of navigation. They’re very much like utility poles, typical, but not nearly as common. Because the trip’s photographs are sequential, the stop had to be somewhere between Bellefont and Spearville. I wondered if I could be more specific than that. When viewing photography in a book or exhibition, I hate not knowing where a place happens to be. Titles can tend to be poetic. While a title like A Kansas Sky may sound very nice, it is not informative. I always want to know the location of a place no matter how universal the moment seems to be.

 

The previous set of photographs featured a field of wind turbines. With that information in mind, I could narrow the search of the highway. The relative flatness of the plains is completely leveled out when viewed from the sky. Aerial perspective reduces monumental grain elevators into miniscule sightings on the ground. A Birdseye view is abstract. Verticality vanishes without the presence of cast shadows. Utility poles can nearly become invisible. Without knowing what to search for, I would have never found the railroad signal. A light colored circular disturbance beside the train tracks was the only thing that gave it away. Only the surrounding mound of gravel could be seen from the air. The Google highway view proved that the signal was there. With that established, I could see that the shot was taken not far from an intersection with a dirt road. Feeling the exhilaration of insignificance that comes from a quiet stop along a highway, it is not surprising that 129 Rd did not make into my notebook.