For Walter De Maria:
On 3rd
July 2009, I walked the perimeter of Lightning
Field in awe as a deer ran through the poles before twilight. A
thunderstorm rolled in and we watched lightning strike for two hours from the
cabin’s porch. I could fill the rest of this post with superlatives, yet no
words or photographs adequately describe what we witnessed.
The following
morning, I pocketed a few smooth, yellow stones from the center of the field, substituting
them for a red rock from the base of James Turrell’s Roden Crater. “From one earthwork to the next,” I thought as I
hurled the pebble collected from Lightning
Field into Robert Smithson’s Amarillo
Ramp a few days after.
I was deeply
saddened after learning Walter De Maria died last week. Before leaving for Texas, I photographed a hardened chunk of loam from the New York Earthroom. I am racked with guilt by its presence but now I know what I must do with it. I am sorry
that it took a great artist’s death for that revelation to occur.
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