"Right now we're on Route 57," says Llamas as he's driving. They're getting ready to hit Route 64 toward St. Louis and will reach Nebraska by nightfall. At the time of this interview, Salt Lake City is still a day away.

On her lap Abraham splits a turkey sub, and through the phone lines, the paper crackles.

"This brings back memories," she says of the year the couple spent traveling in this same car across all of America on an artistic mission they called The Nomadic Project.

The project was as ambitious as it was idealistic. The plan was to visit every state in the union, tap into the place's collective history and psyche in a one-week stay, then paint a painting and write a song about it. The couple's underlying desire was to head out into an America divided by the Iraqi war and try to find some kind of unifying force.

The reality was a bit more down-to-earth. For thirteen months, the couple subsisted on spaghetti and Wendy's 99-cent salads, camping in the back of their orange Honda Element.

The result of their 2005 pilgrimage is a traveling exhibition called "Opening America," a collection of eerie and Dali-esque landscapes that will make its way from state to state through 2009. The exhibit can be seen at UTah Artist Hands, 61 W. 100 South, Salt Lake City, through June.

But when you talk to Abraham and Llamas over a cell phone or meet them in person - even after seeing the impressive and accomplished collection of work - a question lingers in the conversation: Did Abraham and Llamas ever really find what they were looking for?

In the footsteps of ancestors: Creative treks like Abraham and Llamas' have been going on for hundreds of years, particularly westward-going ones, says Hikmet Loe, director of the Utah Humanities Council's literature program. She lists artists ranging from 19th-century photographer Matthew Brady to painters of the Hudson River School to writers like Jack Kerouac and the Beats. In the words of Paul Simon, they had all "gone to look for America."

There's an established artistic tradition of American pilgrimages among 19th and 20th century artists, who were inspired by the country's sublime beauty, according to Loe, an art historian who teaches at Westminster College and is the former arts librarian at the Salt Lake City library.

Some were sent by the government literally to survey the land. Others went to pay homage to the "divine godliness" manifest in the expansive territories.

Abraham and Llamas, though, both self-taught artists, don't see particular antecedents in their work. They say the Nomadic Project was born of their own time and circumstance. Llamas' best friend was serving in Iraq, as were others of the couple's friends.

They wanted to figure out "what is this thing called America," as Abraham phrases it, "and why are we fighting to defend it?"

Idealism, surrealism, realism: The trip took guts and sacrifice. The couple sold their Florida home, using the proceeds to fund the trip. Loved ones doubted their sanity and their safety. Some said they ought to buy a gun.

Now, two years older and wiser, at age 25 and 27, Abraham and Llamas reflect on the magnitude of their undertaking, as if looking back on selves they can hardly believe they were.

Llamas says he thought he'd write 50 songs, but instead only came up with 10.

Once they had a car accident and were laid up for a month.

Some people they met along the way were bewildered at the youthful idealism of their plans.

One of their paintings - of the state of Wyoming - was stolen and never returned. Fortunately, the couple had a digital picture of it.

So did the project work?

"Uniting the country?" Abraham answers with a question as she and her husband speed across the Midwest, their car jammed with 49 finished paintings, 1 artistic reproduction (of the Wyoming painting), and one personal reproduction: Their 10 week-old daughter, Crimson, who coos from her car seat as if on cue.

They started off with such big ideas. "What a huge undertaking," says Abraham, of the couple's younger selves, who set off like vagabonds with a big idea and a map to match.

"It all seemed so simple and clear then," Abraham says. In the end, she doesn't know if she and her husband figured out what there was in this country worth fighting for or how it was united, but they're proud of their accomplishment. And the trip deepened their own appreciation of the country.

Abraham adds as an afterthought that she nearly always painted outside. Dust and pollen of each state flew onto each canvas, and are now permanently embedded there. She thinks that's pretty cool.

Which makes you wonder if the couple did find something, after all, by which the nation is united: However differently we may see it, the country is composed of gusts of wind, slants of light, night skies filled or not with visible stars.

In other words, Abraham's paintings, taken together, seem to say: Here we all are.

A marriage of canvas and chord

"Opening America," an exhibition of the 50 paintings from the Nomadic Project, will be on display at UTah Artist Hands, 61 W. 100 South, Salt Lake City, through the month of June. Each original painting is for sale for $1,300. Prints and albums are also available. For information, visit www.the nomadicproject.com, www.UTahands.com, or call Pam O'Mara at 801-355-0206.

Nomadic Project by the

* Months on the road: 13

* Miles traveled: 62,218

* Budget: $10 a day for two people for food

* Number of nights camping in back of car: 268