Digital Commons @ Otterbein

Title

Badlands 1

Artist

Donald T. Austin, Otterbein UniversityFollow

Files

Date Range

Fall 2018

Contributor

Donald T. Austin

Description

"The Badlands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth." -Theodore Roosevelt

Dimensions

40" X 15"

Exhibition

Faculty

Material

Digital Inkjet Proof; Images produced with iPhoto 7+ phone camera; Typography and layout produced in Adobe Illustrator

Place

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Provenance

Columbus, Ohio

Time Period

May 2017- December 2017

For Sale?

Yes

Recommended Citation

Austin, Donald T., "Badlands 1" (2018). Don Austin - Be Well Out Here: The Big Go West. 1.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/bewell/1

Comments

This is what it must be like to stand and walk on the Moon, or Mars, or Io circling around Jupiter. It might as well be… I was that far away from everything back East. What is seemingly a wasteland filled my entire being with awe. After a long duration of occupational stress and anxiety, this is exactly what I needed. A place of “emptiness” to empty my soul so I could begin the process of renewal. The Earth has gone through countless episodes of purification and renewal over the past 4.5 billion years. We as humans must follow this protocol as well. This can be accomplished by immersing yourself in a place that takes your thoughts thousands of miles away from your everyday ramblings. It is especially remarkable when that place is so unfamiliar that you find it challenging to accept that it exists. Pictures provide evidence that this place is there, but nothing can describe what goes through your soul when you stand in its presence.