Bents Old Fort Ceramic Art Tile
The fort sits on the north bank of the Arkansas, about eight miles east of La Junta. For sixteen years it was the only American outpost between Missouri and the settlements at Santa Fe, a square of adobe in the long grass where Cheyenne and Arapaho traders, Anglo travelers, and Hispanic muleteers came to trade buffalo robes. The Arkansas was the border with Mexico then. The original walls fell to flood and weather. What stands today is the 1976 reconstruction, built from the diaries and the dig. The artwork is for the families with great-grandparents on the Trail, the kid who came on a fourth-grade field trip and never forgot, the rancher who watches the river from his porch.
Slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, in our family studio in Knoxville, Tennessee.