Spencer Finch's "Great Salt Lake and Vicinity"

Spencer Finch, Great Salt Lake and Vicinity, 2017 (Pantone chips and pencil)

Laurie Blakeslee sent me a link to Spencer Finch's Great Salt Lake and Vicinity on Instagram yesterday. I haven't stopped thinking about it mainly because it is an ingenious example of site specific artwork featuring a collaboration with the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Secondly, I quickly fall for re-purposing Pantone colors and making them into a vessel to describe personal experience. It involves studious observation, a journey, and a collection ending with 1,132 chips traversing the landscape from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to the UMFA.

Spencer Finch, Great Salt Lake and Vicinity, 2017 [Image via Hyperallergic]

From The Utah Review:

"The work constitutes a richly detailed field observational guide, created as Finch spent several days circumnavigating the Great Salt Lake. Finch selected Pantone swatches that corresponded precisely to the meticulous scientific-like observations he made of the colors during his trip. He also labeled in pencil each swatch with the originating source of color, which included trees, lake algae blooms, native birds of prey and other elements he observed as he circled the Great Salt Lake."