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."

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

Soaked in the Great Salt Lake Redux

Last year nearly to the day, Kyla Tighe photographed me dipping paper in the Great Salt Lake for the Postcard Collective. [image above courtesy of Kyla].

I sent one to Mail Artist Ernst Richter from Berlin and something started happening (and continues to this day). My postcard has traveled all over the world and the documentation appeared in my mailbox for the first 44 days and in my inbox everyday thereafter. Ernst also paid very close attention to my influences and references to them are also present. Below are some of the highlights followed by one more action in the name of art that occurred at Spiral Jetty on 1st May.

"A Fake Cake and a Fake Cake" [Ernst Richter]

"Two Berliners and Newspaper" [Ernst Richter]

"With Sleeping Cat Henry, Berlin-Ruhleban" [Ernst Richter]

"With wrapped bathing trunks. Forumbad Olympiastadion, Berlin-Charlottenburg" [Ernst Richter]

"With the hands of 3 Berlin-born brothers. Berlin-Spandau" [Ernst Richter]

"Inside Richard Serra, Berlin Junction. Philharmonie, Berlin-Tiergarten" [Ernst Richter]

"Salt-Spiral, Water and Card. Berlin-Ruhleben" [Ernst Richter]

"Yellow Friday in Berlin" (After Sophie Calle's Chromatic Diet) [Ernst Richter]

"Riezler Alpsee, Austria" [Ernst Richter]

"A well in Hittisau, Austria" [Ernst Richter]

"Berlin Wall" [Ernst Richter]

"In the river bed of  the Bregenzerache, Austria" [Ernst Richter]

"Waldfriedhof Heerstrasse, Berlin-Charlottenburg" [Ernst Richter]

"Fence post 82. Murellenteich, Berlin" [Ernst Richter]

"Fence post 53. Murellenteich, Berlin" [Ernst Richter]

"Fence post 9. Murellenteich, Berlin" [Ernst Richter]

The Berlin Born Brothers' father then took the postcard to Thailand (and later it visited Spain). The above three photographs are from the first trip.

I then took Ernst and the Berlin Born Brothers back to Spiral Jetty...

... this year's place where circles are closed. Thanks, Ernst and the Berlin Born Brothers (and their father), for keeping my love of Mail Art alive.

Completing the Circle: Amarillo Ramp to Spiral Jetty

Once upon a time in 2009, I selected a part (mainly rocks and sometimes mud) of each earthwork I visited and transferred it to the next: Spiral Jetty to Sun Tunnels, Sun Tunnels to Double Negative, Double Negative to the closest I could get to Roden Crater, Roden Crater to Lightning Field, and Lightning Field to Amarillo Ramp. This presented the anticipatory return to Spiral Jetty to deposit the rock from Amarillo Ramp at an unknown point in the future. Enter a myriad of other concerns that prevented me from taking the exact piece back to Spiral Jetty, or the Amarillo Ramp rain out last May which did not facilitate selecting a new one, and we come to 2016.

Somewhere around here in January while walking Amarillo Ramp, I chose a fragment of red sandstone and it resided....

... in my car's change drawer, bouncing and rattling around over the thousands of miles I trekked across the West since then.

I did not have any intention of visiting Spiral Jetty again this year, but when I discovered I was only 1.5 hours away from it last weekend, I had to make the trip. Note: never visit Spiral Jetty on a Sunday afternoon in the spring as the parking lot was overloaded, teenagers were complaining that their parents dragged them all the way out in the middle of nowhere to see this, and I witnessed a dog peeing on the earthwork (!). None of this qualified as a contemplative experience.

Amidst the hoards, I buried this at the very center. In doing so, I completed a task overdue, I said goodbye to a collaboration long over, and I marked the end of visiting earthworks until another potential school field trip in the future (or Roden Crater miraculously opens to the public for less than a $6500 ticket price before I am dead).

Spiral Jetty - Three Visits in 28 Hours

The evening of 18th May. The horizon is straight. The vehicle is crooked.

View of Spiral Jetty through Trevor's phone during the rainstorm on the evening of the 18th.

I take this photograph every visit but this time I forgot to have someone photograph me.

The sky over the top of Spiral Jetty while standing in the middle (for Kristin Reeves). 

During the rainstorm on the 18th May.

Steamed window #1.

Steamed window #2 (both of the above on the 18th May).

Morning of the 19th May.

Practice/demo jetties on the evening of the 19th.
 

 Sunset on the 19th May.

Postcard Collective Spring 2015: "A Great Distance"

[Excuse the fact that my laptop was a problematic beast and prevented blogging in a timely manner during most of the Earthworks Road Trip Volume 2. I will make up for it in the coming weeks.]

I knew that I wanted to create a postcard focusing on one of my multiple trips to Spiral Jetty this month, long before the 5th anniversary theme "A Great Distance" was announced. Fortunately, the concept of soaking paper in the Great Salt Lake was a relevant topic. I also knew that I was unable to adhere to the deadline, something that I try hard to follow (and have only failed at once). They were sent 24 days late (sorry everyone).

The night before leaving for Amarillo, I spent 2.5 hours on the old fashioned typewriter, trying not to make too many mistakes but eventually tossing five. I had every intention to send them in the plastic envelope seen below, but the object after the soaking was too fragile and I opted for encasing them in another envelope. Yes, I, too, am skeptical that this is the equivalent of a postcard.

Spiral Jetty can be seen in this photograph along the shore on the left. This was the clearest water not counting the murky puddles in the background.

The "postcard" is the evidence of a performative action that occurred on 19th May 2015. Salt and sand encrust some of the pages as they took two days to dry on a motel radiator and the floor of a car.

It may also be one of my first contributions that did not feature a photograph.

All images were taken by Kyla Tighe on my iPhone 6. I couldn't be happier with her results despite the overcast day.

Forever bouncing around from one thought to the next...

Earthworks are again entering my life as my colleague, Lara Kuykendall and I prepare to teach a course called "Space, Land and Concept in Art of the American West." Today, I saw this video documenting Julian Sand's visit to the Spiral Jetty. There will be more posts as I revisit this genre of art and contemplate whether or not I will be making work in response during another visit in May. Part of me is hoping that is the case.




Link via.

Tacita Dean, Robert Smithson & Postcards

Tacita Dean, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1997/1999


Sheila tweeted this link to a Tate interview of Tacita Dean discussing JG Ballard, Robert Smithson and Spiral Jetty last week. Dean discusses how different times are from 1997 when she first searched for Smithson's earthwork in the Great Salt Lake. In addition, she elaborates on her interest in the connection between the author and the artist and their relationship with Spiral Jetty. Also of note is her discussion of overpainted postcards.


  

Tacita Dean, c/o Jolyan, 2012-2013
100 found postcards of pre-war Kassel, hand-painted with gouache