By Richard Stephens

BEATTY — Prepare to have your definition of art expanded.
In keeping with the heritage of Albert Szukalski, whose work seeded Goldwell Open Air Museum, the organization’s latest artists in residence are creating work that challenges the audience to experience the unexpected and flex the imagination.
Tory Tepp and Faith Purvey will be exhibiting the fruits of their “Underground River Project” Thursday, Dec. 22, at the Red Barn, beginning at 11 a.m.
The work is not easily described in a few words. The two artists, friends who met while graduate students at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, have been using found materials to create a “base station” and “substations,” that can best be described as sculptures, constructions, or shelters, and interacting with them to create a sort of mystical or mythological experience.
The artists use the word “alchemy” to describe what they do.
“We transform the junk we find and give it a different meaning, a different purpose … almost a new life,” says Tepp. “It is transformative on many levels.”
They stress that the work is “site specific,” that it is not only created with materials found in the area, but the creative process itself is a reaction to and collaboration with the site. Tepp says it involves “Looking at the landscape and putting a kind of magical twist on it.”
That creative process is both very simple and quite complex. On one level, Purvey describes their approach as “a kid-like state, roaming, exploring, finding these special places.”
On the other hand, the somewhat different visions of two artists who find themselves working together on a mutual project “creates the friction — the heat that allowed the transformation.”
Tepp says that the project “evolved very organically and became about the landscape right away.”
Purvey said they were drawn to work along the underground river (the Amargosa) because “when we first got here it was so yellow (with fall color) and it was just right.”
“The alchemy,” explains Tepp, “is sort of a combination of scientific principles, mysticism, and a kind of esoteric tradition, and we’ve been using this as a basis for exploring these sites.”
As they created the “substations,” they would spend time inhabiting them, reacting to the environment, and creating stories about them.
For instance, when someone destroyed their work at the first site before it was finished, they created a story about it being destroyed by aliens. Purvey refers to this as “giving a story to a space.”
They also refer to this aspect of the work as “mini mythologies” and “miniature stories,” and the artists themselves become characters in these stories.
A common thread that can be traced through the various structures and installations is the use of copper. Purvey says she remembers Tepp in grad school referring to copper as “a beautiful material.”
He also says it is associated mythologically with Venus, the goddess of love. Some of the structures are held together with copper sutures. Elsewhere, it is hammered into links, or used as a color element.
Visitors to the Red Barn on Thursday will enter the “base station” through a symbolic mine entrance, “a mine that leads to an underground river,” says Tepp, to which Purvey adds the adjective “magical.”
Visitors will hopefully have the opportunity to tour the substations, and there will be refreshments.
The artists also say that any who want to stay after are welcome to grab a sledge hammer and help dismantle everything, as it is all temporary.