The River/El Rio: both Sides, No Sides

This collaborative, integrative terrazzo floor installation for the ConRAC Facility at the El Paso International Airport, El Paso, Texas, is an extended project from River Spirit.
Poetry embedded into the abstracted river floor design was written by Bobby Byrd and Sasha Pimental, award winning poets from El Paso. They collaborated on a theme inspired by the culture of the binational sister cities straddling the border, El Paso, Texas, U.S. and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The poem spiral flows in and out of the center of the foyer where visitors can look up to the hanging dichroic acrylic glass installation, Radiance, created by Re:Site.

Photo: Scott Weaver

Poetry embedded in the terrazzo floor can be read upon walking into the ConRAC facility which leads in and out of the center of the foyer.

The River/El Rio: both Sides, No Sides

by Bobby Byrd and Sasha Pimental

El Paso is rooted like a thicket of salt cedar and cottonwood on the Rio Grande. El río cuts through mountains to make this place a natural passage. That’s what el paso means, the pass. For centuries many different peoples—like ourselves, right now, standing here—have passed through El Paso, going north, going south, going west, going east. On the other side is La Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. Los mexicanos call this river “el Río Bravo,” and they know, like we know, that we are all brothers and sisters. We breathe the same air, we drink the same water. We are border people. Somos fronterizos. We are without end.

Begin from water, the great stillness of desert night and cooling air, our river violet and inky. La luz de la luna en las colinas. And a word rustles across the page, between mouths, at the edge of state and country. El Paso, sólo el Río Bravo tiembla entre tú y el rostro brillante de Juárez—and when the plane descends, both cities glisten in the window, a single ocean of light. Begin now, too, in ascent of flight—the altitude of shared breath, and how, below clouds, our land breaks through: like puddles of star.

Radiance

This center piece to the foyer was designed by Re:Site

Photo: Scott Weaver

El Paso Int Airport CONRAC Entry El Paso TX | Photo © Copyright Scott Weaver 2016. All rights reserved.