Imposing spaces carved into the heart of a mountain and decorated with sculptures and bas-reliefs made by hand, using simple tools: we are talking about the chapels and underground galleries created in the New Mexico desert by Ra Paulette, a common man who left everything to live a life of meditation and silence, in contact with nature.
Imposing spaces created in the heart of a mountain and decorated with sculptures and bas-reliefs made by hand, using simple tools: we are talking about chapels and underground galleries made in the New Mexico desert by Ra Paulette, an ordinary man who left everything to live a life of meditation and silence, in contact with nature.
Ra Paulette lived in Indiana, in the United States, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and led a life that we could define "normal and ordinary". In the XNUMXs, after losing his job and going through a series of low-paying jobs, he decides to leave his home and hometown to move to New Mexico, to lead a life of solitude and meditation, away from the noise and from the frenzy of the world.
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And it is precisely here, in the desert, that her extraordinary artistic adventure begins: self-taught, armed with a chisel, perseverance and patience, Paulette begins to dig quarries in the rock, spending her days creating and adorning small spaces dedicated to meditation, like chapels. Soon, his work attracted the curiosity of other people, so much so that some quarries were commissioned to him.
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And so, from little chapel to little chapel, since 1985 Paulette, a shy and solitary artist, has excavated and meticulously decorated an underground space of over 8.400 square meters, consisting of several quarries connected by fourteen galleries. A real underground cathedral, whose value is estimated at around one million dollars, and which is above all a place to gather to think and meditate, away from the noise of everyday life.
Today, at the age of 67, Paulette continues to live in solitude and to dedicate herself with perseverance and passion to her art, despite the media attention aroused by her works. The story of her so singular about her was told in 2014 in the documentary-short film Cavedigger, directed by Jeffrey Karoff and which even got an Oscar nomination.
Lisa Vagnozzi
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