Saguaro Land: Phoenix artist Jen Urso focuses on really tiny spaces and maps

Saguaro Land is a series from The Show looking at the Sonoran Desert — the lushest, hottest desert in the world that happens to be our home.

The Show is again taking a look at maps. But the maps made by Jen Urso won’t necessarily help you get from point A to point B. Instead, they’ll help you get a better understanding of where you actually are.

Urso is a Phoenix artist, although she’s originally from the Philadelphia area. She’s done a project where she mapped cactus across the city, and she generally prefers taking a look at the spaces many other people walk right past.

The Show sat down with Urso at her home to talk about her work and what about maps appeals to her.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: And we start the fall season where we’ve started the other so far, with maps. But the maps made by my next guest won’t necessarily help you get from point A to point B. Instead, they’ll help you get a better understanding of where you actually are. Jen Urso is a Phoenix artist, although she’s originally from the Philadelphia area. She’s done a project where she mapped cactus across the city, and as you’ll hear, Jen really prefers taking a look at the spaces many other people walk right past. I sat down with her so at her home earlier to talk about her work, and we started with what about maps appealed to her.

JEN URSO: I think I like the idea of situating ourselves in space and, you know, situating our experience in space. So a little bit less about, like, identifying landmarks as much. There’s different ways that you can use mark making or locating yourself, like, through drawing and stuff like that that sort of becomes a map. You know, it sort of ended up accidentally, even though I’ve always been, like, totally obsessed with maps.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, and some of your maps, if not most of them, deal with things specifically in the desert or in this, in this area. Is there something specific about working in Phoenix, working in the Sonoran Desert, that makes it good for people who are into maps?

JEN URSO: I don’t know. You know, it’s, it’s a lot less dense, so, you know, it’s easier to identify things. I mean, I feel like maybe if I was mapping an area where there was more density, then the, the maps would just be of smaller zones. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if there’s anything specific about the Sonoran Desert that makes me want to map it. It’s more being in the space and discovering things that are there. In order to see what the desert’s really like within our lived environment, you have to kind of uncover it and, and, you know, pull things away and, you know, watch it sort of squirt itself out of little spots like, you know, salt bush popping up, like, in the sidewalk cracks and things like that. Like, that’s what was here before we all moved in here.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, well, and, you know, some of the stuff that you map is, you know, it’s not like necessarily buildings or landmarks, as you say. It can be, you know, just like a plant coming out of the sidewalk, or I know you had done a map about cactuses across the valley. Like, it’s, it’s not always the obvious stuff.

JEN URSO: Right. Yeah, um, in fact, I mean, that’s definitely the thing I’m more interested in is not the obvious. Um, so even down to mapping like, like things like a crack in the sidewalk, like what can you find there. So, you know, like looking closer, smaller, tighter versus, you know, vast swaths of things so that you can understand things at like a, like a more micro level.

MARK BRODIE: How do you feel that your artwork and the kind of work you do, especially with maps, how has that changed maybe the way that you see Phoenix and see the desert?

JEN URSO: Well, my art I think has always been about paying attention to things that are normally ignored or stuff that I’m told is not important. So someone tells me that this isn’t an important thing, I want to know why not, and then I want to lift it up. So looking at things like weeds or interstitial spaces, um, you know, there was a piece I had done in Scottsdale where I had collected some organic matter from this alleyway and then looked at it all under a microscope and then created this augmented reality piece that sort of blossomed everything out of this corner. So it was like, there’s so much, there’s so much beauty and growth and life and possibility like even in these little areas that are the ones we want to pretend don’t exist. Which is what kind of happens here. You know, we want to sort of live here and appreciate like the wonderful winters and the great weather and then I guess everybody leaves to San Diego in summer. But, but without kind of addressing the fact that we’re actually in a desert.

MARK BRODIE: How has your thought or your perception of this place changed over the time that you’ve lived here and the work that you’ve done and the people you’ve met and the things that you’ve thought about?

JEN URSO: Well, I remember when I first moved here, you know, I came from, I went to school in Pittsburgh and I grew up outside Philly and it’s very terrain and gritty and, you know, the stuff’s been around for like 150 years, you know, and everything has like soot on it, you know. And so I had, I was taking photographs a lot and I was really into this like kind of urban grittiness and decay and stuff like that. And then I come here and it was like nothing was decaying. And, you know, I can’t say look back 25 years ago and, and pinpoint like how things shifted from then, but I remember there being that conflict in my mind of not understanding like how to live in a space like this, even though I thought it was really beautiful and, you know, I was attracted to it.

MARK BRODIE: At what point did that change for you?

JEN URSO: God, it’s hard to say. I had started doing these performance walks where I was walking around areas in downtown Phoenix. And you know what, I want to say maybe it was around the time when the light rail was getting put in and all these buildings were getting knocked down and the ground was getting churned up. And I remember going down Central and seeing like these layers cut away into the ground and I just, like, like an idiot was like, “Oh, like the ground connects to everything.” And you’re looking at all these layers of, you know, history in here. And I’m sure for an archaeologist they’re like, “Yeah, duh,” you know. But I remember it being kind of like eye-opening to me to think of this as a continuous space of land. It’s not like city, suburb, your house, your business. It’s like, it’s all continuous and, you know, like what is it really? Like what, what are we living on here, you know?

MARK BRODIE: Have you figured out an answer to that question, at least in your mind?

JEN URSO: No. I mean, I’ve realized that I am in the process now of trying to unlearn a lot of stuff about what this place is supposed to be. You know, people say, “Well, how could you grow anything in the desert? How can you grow vegetables?” I’m like, “Well, there’s an entire society that lived here for over a thousand years who thrived and which we’ve actively, you know, suppressed.” And that knowledge is something that I’m now trying to like unearth and appreciate and understand because I think it also syncs with my idea of wanting to live in better balance with my environment.

MARK BRODIE: When you make your maps, you talked about, you know, not just doing landmarks, doing things that maybe most people would ignore. Has that helped you see this place a little differently when you are actively looking for things that most people walk right past?

JEN URSO: Yeah, I think anytime me or anyone else is actively looking in a space, um, your, your eyes are going to open to something new. And in my work, like, the tendency is to create an environment that allows people to do that. So it’s not necessarily about look at this exact thing, it’s about, like, you know, shift your perspective so you’re actually engaging in a way different than you’re used to.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that the work that you do and the kind of work you do, especially with maps, would be possible somewhere else or would be the same somewhere else?

JEN URSO: I, I think it would be different. Um, you know, I was in New York for a summer and I was looking for interstitial spaces and realizing that there weren’t any, you know. Like, it was like the cracks in the sidewalk were the closest thing I could find. Um, so it was another adjustment, like it was when I first moved here. And I think that’s what it would be like. It’s not, you know, because there’s a lot of artist residency opportunities where they’re like, “Come to our, you know, rural area and, you know, make work in reaction to this environment.” And I’m never quite sure like what to propose for a space like that because so much of what I do is rooted into this space.

MARK BRODIE: Jen Urso, thanks a lot for your time. I appreciate it.

JEN URSO: Thank you.