The following is an excerpt from a Dec. 10 Essay for . Gerco de Ruijter, artist-in-residence at 黑洞社区鈥檚 Ulrich Museum of Art, is featured.
Dutch photographer Gerco de Ruijter arrived earlier this year for an artist鈥檚 residency at Wichita鈥檚 Ulrich Museum of Art, he noticed something strange while driving to a friend鈥檚 house outside of town. At several points, the rural road he was on came to an abrupt halt at a T intersection in the middle of nowhere, requiring a quick zigzag to continue on the same road. The detour could be anywhere from a few dozen yards to nearly half a mile, but, in every case, there was no visible reason why the road should shift at all. This wasn't the urban street grid of Wichita, throwing a few random twists and turns de Ruijter鈥檚 way. It was the large-scale grid of the country itself鈥攖hose huge squares of agricultural land visible from airplanes鈥攕eemingly gone haywire.