Earthworks Observational Kits in the Faculty Show

Earthworks Observational Kit: Double Negative
Wooden box, Golden Nature Guide to Rocks and Minerals, bandages for impending injuries, matches for the impromptu fire pit & notebook for the Geocaching box on the North Cut
2015 - 2016

Earthworks Observational Kit: Roden Crater (Unobserved)
Wooden box & green ribbon closest to the color of money 
2015 - 2016 

Earthworks Observational Kit: Spiral Jetty
Wooden box, paper to soak in the Great Salt Lake and plastic bags for storage, specimen bottles and tags for saltwater samples, rocks to make a mini-version of the jetty & empty Epic Brewery Spiral Jetty India Pale Ale bottle (to be substituted with a full one)
2015 - 2016

Earthworks Road Trip Through the Binoculars

The theme that keeps on giving...

Two versions of the Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd's Concrete Sculptures (so blurry it hurts)

Marfa Lights Observation Building at Sunset (these are the only Marfa Lights we saw and they were photographed from a telescope)

Imagine Walter De Maria's Lightning Field at sunset here.

Very Large Array, Socorro, New Mexico

South Kaibob Trail, South Rim of the Grand Canyon

Wupatki National Monument, Arizona

Michael Heizer's Double Negative with and without scale reference.

Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels (ideal for the format)

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty

Double Negative: Entropy at Its Finest

It was only in the 80ºs when visiting Michael Heizer's Double Negative this year (it beat the 115º heat from 2009). The Space, Land and Concept... crew descends into the South side of the earthwork.

The view across across to the North side. There is a photographer from Los Angeles stationed with a tripod at the top of the opening. Lexi and Sarah are looking at a geocaching box at the closest end of the cut.

Six years have wreaked havoc on the earthwork. Large chunks of stone have fallen since the last visit and it was inadvisable to walk too close to the edge when peering down from above.

I noticed (spoiler alert for future Observational Kit) that the remains of many fire pits littered the base of Double Negative. This was photographed from the South side looking East toward the Virgin River.

For the first time, I traversed the Mormon Mesa to view it from the North side. Our vehicles are barely visible for scale reference.

Rubble on the North side.

A couple days ago, I looked at the envelope in which Camden sent me the concrete block and was shocked to see it dated 2012. I have been chipping and tossing this around the globe for three years. The startling part is that it is only half gone. Double Negative was an ideal location to leave a piece as it is now lost in the debris of fallen stone.

Burial (always)

Jacinda Russell, The Burial of Three People, Two Places, and One Time Period: Place 1 at Double Negative, 2009

As the end of the semester draws to a close and the earthworks road trip approaches, the burial of objects is on my mind. I have no plans to inter anything this trip, preferring instead to observe. I cannot help but be reminded of the past, however, as distant as it may be.

The passage below is from an article we read in the Space, Land and Concept... course this month which brought back memories in terms of why I am compelled to complete this action.

"The act of burial or placing into the ground and receiving from it, a cause-and-effect process, marks our intimate relationship with the earth. On the one hand, it indicates passing, returning to the soil, disintegration and transformation; on the other, generation and life-giving, placing in the ground for the purpose of planting. It is also a metaphor for human intelligence and transcendence through the communication of ideas..."

Agnes Denes in "Notes on Eco-Logic: Environmental Artwork, Visual Philosophy and Global Perspective"

[Congratulations to Agnes Denes the award winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship this month.]

Satellite Views of Land Art

I rediscovered this link recently when wondering what a satellite view of Lightning Field looks like (not much as it turns out). Wishing I had thought to incorporate this perspective in the 2009 earthworks project but happy I am able to use it as research this year.

Michael Heizer's Double Negative

Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp
 

Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels

Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass"

I watched the spectacle of Levitated Mass online as it was moved from a quarry in Riverside to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art over the period of ten nights in 2012. In person, it is a sight to be hold and very easy to photograph multiple times at every angle.

The image above depicts one of the two entries which, fortunately, only featured five people (rather than two dozen) photographing themselves as Hercules lifting the 21' high, 340 ton monolith over their heads. 

I was curious about support systems in a location so close to the San Andreas Fault.

It was equally important to walk next to the monolith as it was underneath it. The light changed the form drastically from one side to the next. At one moment it resembled an Egyptian pyramid but quickly turned into a prow of a ship.

I suppose I should watch the movie before we discuss Michael Heizer in the earthworks class. Netflix thinks I will only rate it 2.7 so this is not promising.

The New Earthworks

Tyler Green has a new post over at Modern Art Notes regarding the "new land art." I've seen references to Agnes Denes' Tree Mountain before and it's worth posting here. The "new" earthworks are more profound in a way - not as destructive but emphasizing the environment and the changing views of the earth since the early 1970s. My brother Tim, a landscape architect, and I are talking about making one - more along this vein not that of Michael Heizer.

From the website: "Eleven thousand trees were planted in a complex mathematical pattern by eleven thousand people from around the world, to be maintained for 400 years. One of the largest environmental reclamation sites in the world, Tree Mountain, created from refuse material from a gravel pit, was declared a national monument to serve future generations with a meaningful legacy. Dedicated in 1996 by the President of Finland, dignitaries, and participants from around the world."