My work explores hallucinatory landscapes of the US American West by using a combination of painting styles outside of the Western painting canon. I cross-reference painting and cinema, interweaving video, acrylic paint and the panorama to create a satirical homage to the history and present state of the USA. However, through an earnest devotion to the medium - both painting and cinema - I find my criticisms also yearn to hold onto a belief in a myth I know to be false. This is an American History conversation about artifice and consumerism through advertising. I use Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert as my metaphor. Las Vegas’ rapidly expanding population has displaced actual plants and animals to replace them with artificial sculptures of the desert cactus and coyote. This desert landscape occupies what was previously Mexico and before that Indigenous lands. TV and hallucinogens play a part in my work - as a means to tap into the psychological staticky holiness of the desert, and I use certain painting techniques to mimic the optical effects of these phenomena. These techniques reference my experience with theater backdrop painting and psychedelic movie posters as well as kitsch hobbyist landscape painting. My focus is the specific territory outside of the National Parks service, the government lands leased to mining companies and housing developers. These are the mystical desert tracts of spacious landscape, just as ecologically important to the whole, yet considered “not quite pretty enough” to warrant a National Park sign or roaming ranger.

This study examines the role of place and ritual performance in the construction of subjectivities and social memories in relation to the 1890s Ghost Dance, a North American pan-Indian ritually-centered social movement that began in western Nevada and spread from the West Coast through the Great Plains during the last decade of the nineteenth century. This dissertation also explores efforts to alternatively preserve, promote, and eradicate practices representing two inherently contradictory spatial regimes, or ways of living as Beings-in-the-World. Such an analysis is done through the study of ritual and social responses to the spatial disruptions and collective identity ruptures evinced by Westward expansionism on the native peoples of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau called the Numa. This research is designed to advance knowledge of Ghost Dance ceremonial sites and ritual praxis in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. This is done through the isolation of physiographic characteristics, performance characteristics, and cultural inscription practices contributing to the selection, valuation, and use of particular ritual settings for Ghost Dance performances. I hypothesized that three types of sites, World Balancing Places, Regional Balancing Sites, and Local Balancing Sites, or Regions of Refuge, were used for ceremonialism associated with the Ghost Dance among Numic people. Type I sites are ceremonial sites that were used consistently before the arrival of Euroamericans and continued to be used during the late nineteenth century for the performance of the Ghost Dances. Both World and Local Balancing Places are Type 1 Sites. Type II sites are defined as places that were selected as ceremonial sites after encroachment activities made the performance characteristics of Type I Sites nonviable. The social unit of the present analysis is the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. The current methodological framework has been formulated with the intent of producing a holistic treatment of Numic ritual landscapes as evidenced in Ghost Dance ceremonial sites. To this end, I have adopted an intersubjective and iterative approach that utilizes performance and narrative studies, behavioral archaeology, cultural landscape studies, and phenomenology. This research aims to contribute to the theory and methodology underscoring National Historic Preservation efforts.