Showing posts with label Walter De Maria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walter De Maria. Show all posts

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Lightning Field


The first time I saw lightning. The second, I witnessed a sunset that ignited the poles, mere matchsticks against a cool blue landscape. It was our first earthwork, six days after we landed in Amarillo.


I took notes. I observed. I walked counterclockwise, drawing numbers in the dirt with my shoe. With my eyes peeled to the ground avoiding snakes, I missed five pronghorns running through the center. I watched the clouds and contemplated drawing them. I saw the others feed the rabbits apples from the cabin's supply.


We ate cereal standing up in the kitchen for lunch after our arrival. We sat in a hammock on the back porch. We woke up at 5:45 AM, trudged to the NE pole draped in blankets, and through blurry eyes, saw the sunrise, an anticlimactic experience after the previous evening. We napped. We read. We wrote. We wondered what the others would see after us, the first time our group had separated due to the nature of six visitors allowed at once.

Sarah Lassiter wrote an excellent post of our visit on Space, Land and Concept in American Art of the West here.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

R.I.P. 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.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Emoji Art History: The Not So Serious Side Project (Part 1)

It began during finals week at the end of last semester while lying in bed unable to sleep. Deliriously I began recreating works of art with the Emoji app on my iPhone and posted 18 of the results on Instagram. I stopped for a month but kept thinking of new ones. Five weeks later with the new Postcard Collective Winter submission deadline looming, I revisited it. I settled on a form, deciding that I would simulate texting the artist at the top and include only the title of the artwork below. There are many limitations of Emoji - unfortunately there are not enough icons to create some of my favorite artworks (I am still wishing I could do more with Duchamp). Here are 28 in no particular order with a list of 15 others to attempt (coming soon).



Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: David Hockney



Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Walter De Maria


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Yves Klein (with a little help from a friend)


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Wayne Thiebaud



Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Vincent van Gogh


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Sol LeWitt


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Sherrie Levine


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Roy Lichtenstein


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Robert Smithson


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Maurizio Cattelan


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Mark Di Suvero


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Marcel Duchamp


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: John Baldessari


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Jeff Koons


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Janine Antoni


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Henri Rousseau


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Grant Wood


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Georgia O'Keeffe


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Frida Kahlo


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Felix Gonzalez-Torres


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Eleanor Antin


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Ed Ruscha


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Damien Hirst


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Christian Marclay (made while staring at Marclay during an artists' conversation at the Wexner Art Center last night)


Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Andy Warhol




Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Edvard Munch




Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Maya Lin



Jacinda Russell, Emoji Art History: Tom Friedman

One of my favorite parts was pretending for a few brief minutes that I did indeed have all these artists as contacts in my phone.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Paul Shore & Nicole Root's Dessert Sculptures

...this time with the work of Paul Shore and Nicole Root. How could a blog expressing love of earthworks not depict these artists' replica of Walter De Maria's NY Earthroom as a brownie?



Another favorite is a pink wax stick a la Dan Flavin in a corner.



via Art 21 Blog. Check out how sugar wafers, gum, and graham crackers take the elevated view of Minimalist sculpture to another realm.

And even better: "And in a gut-busting version of the Robert Smithson documentary Spiral Jetty, Root imitates Smithson’s dreary monologue as the camera follows the path of a Rock Candy, Heath Bar, Jell-o and powdered sugar spiral."