Ruling Thirds

The line is one of those things in nearly every academic discipline that figures an area's coherence; ensures a domain's purview. Geneology, Geology, Geography, Geometry. For example. In image-making, composition tames its field by a rule of thirds. In this grid, the head occupies the top third with this horizontal top third explicitly marked as the horizon line itself. Cacti inhabit the lower third. In the no man's land which draws the eye to the foreground runs the wavering river. Perhaps a tangential meditation on a painting of Francisco Martinez (1906-1979) by Carlos Rossas. One might simply park the car in this lot for the Martinez Brand of crackling pork snacks in El Paso and not stop to ponder the symmetry of Rossas' painting on the building's exterior wall. This painting paints division as a river that decapitates a man who, born in Juarez in 1906, rises in an emblematic vanishing point depicting El Paso del Norte. The white cross on the mountain to the west (if one reads maps with cardinal north up, west left) winks at the painting's own symmetry as perhaps Mount Cristo Rey still does when it insists on bi-national community through a border-crossing pilgrimage each Holy Week. This particular valley marks the madness of the U.S./Mexican border as families reside within, beneath, across it here. (November 24, 2017)