President’s Circle Happy Hour with David Grant Noble: In the Places of the Spirits

President’s Circle Happy Hour in Memory of Bert Spencer

In the Places of the Spirits with David Grant Noble

As members of the President’s Circle, Founders’ Society, and Legacy Circle, you are cordially invited to attend a Happy Hour with President Michael F. Brown and photographer and writer, David Grant Noble. David will discuss his book, In the Places of the Spirits, while paying tribute to the memory of Bert Spencer who helped fund and make this book possible, along with his wife Colleen Spencer.

In the Places of the Spirits

This book represents the culmination of David Grant Noble’s forty-year career as a fine arts photographer and writer. It features seventy-six duotone plates of the land, people, and deep past of the Southwest, most published here for the first time. Accompanying these beautiful images are personal reflections interwoven with historical and anthropological information. The moving passages reveal much about the man and the magnificent land that inspires his artistry.

“The places we know,” Noble writes, “can be infused with memory and spirit, and landscapes can have soul. The stories contained may speak of creation, gods, mythic monsters, and heroes. They may hold narratives reminding us of triumphs and defeats, sorrows and joys. A place is more than a landform or an ecosystem; it has the capacity to evoke emotion, transmit knowledge and wisdom, and even show people how to live.”

These photographs and words portray the land’s soul, the artist’s vision. Through them, the ancient landscapes and peoples of the Southwest tell their tales, display their beauty, remind us that we are only the most recent of many who have lived and been inspired here.

“This book is about humanity, timelessness, and place in the American Southwest. Amidst an alternating beat of facts, personal narrative, and photographs of landscapes imprinted with ancient images and ancestral homes, the reader/viewer is engaged in a singular odyssey through centuries and sacred space where the boundaries of time are erased.” –Polly Schaafsma, author of Indian Rock Art of the Southwest.

This event is free and open to members of the President’s Circle, Founders’ Society, and Legacy Circle. Please RSVP to Lindsay Archuleta at archuleta@sarsf.org. Space is limited, so please reserve your spot today. 

The reception will take place outdoors with the presentation in the boardroom with the doors open to the outdoors and fully ventilated. To protect your health and that of others, all attendees are presumed to be fully vaccinated. Please also keep in mind the CDC recommendations on how to keep yourself and others healthy: avoid close contact with others, wear a mask (if you are more comfortable doing so), and wash your hands thoroughly. If you are sick or feeling you are getting sick, we ask that you please stay home.

David Grant Noble

David Grant Noble is a photographer and writer whose focus is the history and archaeology of the American Southwest. Living the Ancient Southwest is an anthology about the Southwest’s deep history. In the Places of the Spirits, integrates his photography and writing about the Southwest and its ancient cultures. A revised and expanded 4th edition of his best-selling guidebook, Ancient Ruins and Rock Art of the Southwest, introduces readers to more than a hundred archaeological sites that are open to the public. His most recent book, published in 2020, is Saigon to Pleiku: A Counterintelligence Agent in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, 1962-1963.

Besides writing and photographing, he has worked as a ranch hand, roughneck, roustabout, teacher, newspaper reporter, lecturer, house builder, and archaeological guide. These varied experiences have helped inform his views of life and his creative work.