Sal de Rey

and the “creative” process of getting out of my own way.

October 30, 2025

Visiting a Texas salt flat

with ideas for a site-specific AR sculpture..

On the cusp of Samhain, when the veil between this world and the spiritual world is said to be thin, my partner and I drove north to Sal del Rey, a Texas salt flat just outside of town. I had been carrying an idea for a site-specific AR sculpture and wanted to show him this unusual landscape. But once we arrived, the ideas that had felt exciting in the studio no longer fit. They felt disconnected from the place.

I realized I was caught in my head — in possibilities, timelines, and plans centered around me. I wandered like that for a while, until I remembered the first step of my practice (which I somehow always forget): to listen.

I crouched low, put my hand into the salt water, and felt crystals forming beneath the surface. I asked, quietly, What do I have to learn here? Almost immediately, patterns came into focus: the texture of my skin, suspended between youth and age; the water hovering between liquid and crystal; the feeling of standing inside a moment of transition — between seasons, between states, much like Samhain itself.

There is so much pressure on artists to be clever, to produce something new or distinctive. When I get caught in that impulse, my attention narrows and my understanding shrinks. I’m reminded that my first responsibility is always to return to the source — to listen, to set ego aside, and to meet the world as it is. That, for me, is the work, as essential as any act of painting.