Installation view: Justine Rivas, How to Carry a Cloud. Photo courtesy of The Valley Justine Rivas: How to Carry a Cloud Up through August 7, 2021 The Valley 1800 Camino del La Placita, Unit D Taos, NM 87571 From the Press Release: The Valley is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based painter Justine Rivas . The exhibition, titled How to carry a cloud, includes a series of new paintings that explore hidden sources of water in the desert landscape. Rivas uses clouds and creosote bushes as metaphors for the interconnected sources of life-giving moisture in arid regions. Both reflect water stored in the land and the air, deceptively close and yet inaccessible. Cloud forms appear across several works, oscillating between pattern and landscape. As above, so below- creosote in its various forms appear as a familiar and familial plant speaking to the artists’ connection to the desert landscape, her family has lived in the borderlands since t...