A Handmade Wonderland

A Powerful Collaboration

Wilson and Lagg are perhaps an unlikely pair. On the South Dakota farm where Lagg grew up, he learned to work the land and repair what broke using whatever was at hand. After high school, he joined the US Navy as an electronics technician; today, he uses those skills to construct motors for the larger-than-life-size kinetic moth sculptures he makes with Wilson and light switches so uncommonly concocted that they require explanation for new users. A constant tinkerer, he thrives when he is making puzzles, solving problems, learning by doing; it is a practice Wilson describes as “creation just for the sake of creation.”

Wilson, meanwhile, grew up in Chicago, the daughter of a respected sociology professor and a copy editor. She attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, followed by graduate school at Columbia University in New York, gaining traditional academic training in painting and printmaking and the art-world aspirations that come with it.

Yet, together, they make a formidable team. They host weekly drop-in art activities, which they have cheekily dubbed MoMAZoZo. And with Joan and Warren Malkerson, other Carrizozo residents, they co-run an artist-in-residence program, which has supported more than 90 artists since its founding.

Wilson and Lagg view themselves as “gentle stewards” of the properties they occupy and transform into art. “Little by little, day by day,” as Wilson describes it, their studio work envelops the domestic. Particle-board kitchen cabinets became surfaces for painting loosely gridded, black-and-white designs. When a door handle broke, Lagg’s repair was equal parts functional and sculptural. There was no singular moment, no grand architectural renovation, just two artists living in the desert, making for the sake of living, living through their making.

Today, walls, floors, cabinets, shutters, doorknobs, light switches, lamps, tables, plates, forks, tool belts, and even the top of a broomstick have become opportunities for aesthetic and material engagement. “Any surface that can hold art does hold art,” Wilson says—and that includes the body. “It’s been important for me to wear my artwork,” she says, “to be a walking painting, to alter our expectations of where and how art exists in the world.” Wilson adorns herself in clothes—often made in collaboration with a seamstress—featuring the same broad, bright color palette, painting and printing techniques, and motifs found in her studio practice: pants printed with crescent-moon butts or stylized yucca plants, or brightly painted shirts with geometric patterns. A wooden Afro pick or large dangling earrings made by Lagg, with his signature smooth finishes, complete her ensemble.

This blurring of art and life impacts their studio practices just as it does their domestic lives. For instance, Lagg made a cylindrical shipping container for Wilson out of wooden slats that could be unrolled for easy unpacking. When it was lying flat in the studio, Wilson started painting on it, realizing, “Oh, this could be that rug that we’ve been missing in our living room,” she recalls. “We couldn’t really afford to buy the types of rugs I wanted to have, so we made them. It’s important to create the things that you want to see and have in the world.”

She found the rug format freeing and began to paint and print on more sets of connected wooden slats—both for function and for art shows—often using the motifs one might find in a fiber rug, such as a folded-over corner and tassels. “Anything is possible between tassels,” she says. Guests startle when they step on these “rugs,” realizing their feet have dirtied a painting. Wilson is glad for this response because it highlights material and cultural separations between art for viewing and art for function, between the “fine” and the “decorative”—distinctions based in Eurocentric histories around gender, race, and class.

Both artists prioritize recycling, reusing, and fixing rather than disposing of the old and buying something new. “Just about everything that I create starts with two things that were rejected from other projects,” Lagg says. “I put enough energy into them to not just throw them out. You put disparate pieces together because you’re searching for an idea, you’re searching for a way to make a handle and you want to start with something.”

Wilson smiles at this description, acknowledging that she and Lagg share the collage approach. “That’s how I think about my process of making,” she says. For him, a rolltop desk becomes a built-in bread box. For her, a test print is cut up to find homes across multiple new canvases.