LUDB: Land Art

Amarillo Ramp

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

An earthwork by the artist Robert Smithson, consisting of a 140 foot diameter partial circle of rock, which rises out of the level ground to a height of around 15 feet. The artificial lake in which the piece once emerged is now dry, and the sculpture is slowly eroding. Smithson was killed in a plane crash while surveying the site for this work, along with a photographer and the pilot. The crash site is a few hundred yards from the Ramp. The completion of the piece was performed by his widow, Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and others, shortly after his death in 1973. It was commissioned by Stanley Marsh, a local ranch owner and bon-vivant who also commissioned the famous Cadillac Ranch and several other sculptures on the over 200 square miles of land he owns with his wife around Amarillo.

Amphisculpture, AT&T Control Center

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Beverley Pepper made this sculpture in 1974, a sculptural amphitheater, on a lawn outside a major AT&T office park in New Jersey. Though apparently unrelated to the partially below-grade sculpture, this 200 acre AT&T complex at Bedminster also contains the partially underground global operations center for the entire AT&T communications system.

Art Park

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Art Park was an important development site for emerging earth artists of the 1970's. Located on reclaimed land next to the Niagara River, near Lewiston, New York, the 200-acre state park had a well supported artist-in-residence program that began in 1974. The program was initiated a year after Smithson's death by one of his longtime friends and supporters and it was with his spirit in mind that this outdoor art program on former industrial land was conceived. While some artists like Nancy Holt and Laurie Anderson preferred to work more closely to the dramatic landscape of the gorge at the south end of the property, the plateau area was used by numerous artists, including Alice Aycock, Alan Sonfist, and Dennis Oppenheim. The surface of the plateau, a former industrial spoils pile, was created as a sort of land art project itself, further filled in by Helen and Newton Harrison as part of their "Art Park Spoils Pile Reclamation" project. Most works were temporary, however, and the plateau is studded with the vestiges of removed and filled in artworks: bits of concrete, cable, rebar, and crushed stone, a veritable land art proving ground.

Blythe Intaglios

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A group of three large human and animal forms made by scraping the top layer of desert pavement away, exposing the lighter layer underneath. The largest is an image of a woman, 171 feet long. There is also a snake, and an image of a four legged animal, which is interpreted differently by archeologists: to some it appears to be a horse, in which case the site would post-date 1540, to others it is a mountain lion, which could date the site to as much as 2,000 years ago. The remoteness of the site, next to the Colorado River, near Blythe, allowed these forms to survive, before protective fencing was installed in the 1960's.

Byxbee Park

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

This 30 acre park, constructed on a landfill between 1988-1992, has several earthworks and land art pieces on it, designed by the park designers, George Hargreaves, Peter Richards, and Michael Oppenheimer. A series of mounds, a series of poles, and other berms and concrete zigzags. Palo Alto meets the Bay in an interesting collection of terminal sites around the park. An active landfill for the city lies next to the wastewater treatment plant for the region, which discharges into the adjacent slough. Up until a few years ago, gold from the area's high-tech firms was extracted from the wastewater and sold. Now companies using gold capture it themselves.

Cadillac Ranch

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

This American landmark, composed of ten vintage Cadillacs buried nose-first in a field outside Amarillo, was originally installed in 1974. It was conceived by a group of artists and automobilists known as Ant Farm (Chip Ward, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michaels), and it was funded and "seen through" by the notorios Amarillo resident Stanly Marsh III (Stanly Marsh III is responsible for a host of unusual sights around Amarillo including Floating Mesa, a giant moveable pool table, Robert Smithson's Amarillo Ramp, and the rash of over 2,000 wacky "street" signs currently found all over town). In 1997, concerned about the aestheic impact that the encroaching suburbs of Amarillo were having on Cadillac Ranch, Mr. Marsh had the whole sculpture dug up and relocated to another portion of his property, two miles further outside of town.

Complex City

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Michael Heizer has been building this piece since the early 1970's, and construction continues. The "city" consists of a few "complexes", made of earthen mounds, slopes, and conctete. The series of complexes surround a central "court" which, when complete, will be around a mile long. Complex One has been complete for some years, and the other forms are in various states of completion. Located in central Nevada, at least sixty miles from the nearest community, the site is off the phone and electrical grid, and is one of only a few structures in a vast valley. Heizer has lived and worked at the site for over twenty years.

Desert Research Station

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The Desert Research Station is an educational research facilty, operated by the Center for Land Use Interpretation. It is a field station for reserch related to the desert regions of California, and contains displays about the area.

Devil's Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant

Tue, 8 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Relying on natural decontamination processes instead of chemical agents, Viet Ngo's "Lemna System" utilizes a variety of floating plants to remove harmful phosphorus, nitrogen and algae in water before it is released into a bay of Devil's Lake. Shaped in the form of a long, windy road or a coiled serpent, this site has attracted much attention from environmentalists, artists, and the general public as a role model for the natural reclamation of water.

Dissipate

Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Five small trenches lined in wood, inserted into the playa at the Black Rock Desert. This was number 8 of Michael Heizer's 1968 series "Nine Nevada Depressions." Apparently no remains are visible.

Double Negative

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

An earthwork created by the artist Michael Heizer in 1969 and 1970. The piece consists of two gouges in the edge of a mesa, in southern Nevada. The 30 foot wide, 50 foot deep cuts, made by dynamite and bulldozers, face each other from either side of a "scallop" on the eroded edge of the natural landform, suggesting a continuous, invisible, negative form between them. The piece, totaling almost 1,500 feet from end to end (including the space between), is now property of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Earth Art Exhibit Site

Sun, 13 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A groundbreaking exhibit called "Earth Art" was held at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell University in 1969, curated by Willoughby Sharp. Included in the exhibit were Hans Haacke, Neil Jenney, Richard Long, David Medalla, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gunter Uecker. Most of the works were installed inside galleries. The outdoor works included, Jan Dibbets' "A Trace in the Woods in the Form of an Angle of 30 degrees Crossing a Path," which consisted of a line of approximately 300 of overturned turf. The walk through woods was part of piece. David Medalla made a mound of muddied earth behind the museum, and Dennis Oppenheim cut ice on a river with a chainsaw. Smithson did a mirror displacement in a salt mine, and featured the site as a "nonsite" in the gallery. Apparently nothing of the outdoor works remains.

Earth Mound

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Made by Herbert Bayer in 1955, making it probably the first "earthwork" done within the context of contemporary art, this piece is maintained and visible at the Aspen Institute's Aspen Meadows campus in Aspen, Colorado. Down a nearby path is Anderson Park, which has another piece by Bayer, the "Grass Mound." Bayer is an Austrian artist who taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s. He worked as an architect for the Aspen Institute after moving to Aspen in 1946.

Effigy Tumuli

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The Effigy Tumuli earthwork consists of five geometrically abstracted animal forms, created on old mining land along the Illinois River. Now a state park, the sculpture is in flux, parts eroding, parts overgrown, others nearly bare. It is one of the largest artworks in the country, and the shapes are so large that they can only be discerned from the air. On the ground, one experiences mounded earth, paths, interpretive signs, drainage control gullies, and patches of grass, shrubbery and exposed earth. Michael Heizer was commissioned to make the sculpture in 1983, by the president of the Ottawa Silica Company, who had an interest in art and whose company owned the site. The property had been strip-mined for coal, and was a polluted and eroded barren landscape, with highly acidic soil. For this "reclamation art" project, instead of drawing on his vocabulary of abstract forms, Heizer used figurative forms, creating mounds shaped like animals native to the region. There is a snake, catfish, turtle, frog, and a water strider (the legs of which can be seen in the photograph above). He considered these figures to be evocative of the Indian mounds that can be found throughout the Midwest, and intended his sculpture to be a statement for the Native Americans. A trail wanders through the 1.5 mile long site, and interpretive signs, each with a map of the site, help to give visitors a sense of what they might be looking at. Heizer seemed pleased that the forms were imperceptible from the ground, saying the piece "requires a chronological development of perception."

El Mirage Lake

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

El Mirage is probably the closest dry lake to downtown Los Angeles, and is therefore one of the most heavily visited. It is now regularly used for car racing, land sailing, model aircraft, amateur rocketeers, and film productions. It has been used by numerous known and unknown artists as well. Dennis Oppenheim did "Cobalt Vectors - An Invasion" there in 1978, along with "Relocated Burial Ground" both of which involved black asphalt primer as their primary material. Walter de Maria created "Desert Cross" in 1969, composed of white chalk lines. Michael Heizer made "Windows" and "Circular Surface Drawing" there in 1969. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the backdrop for a variety of Hollywood's B-rated movies.

Erosion and Sedimentation Plan for Red Ash and Coal Silt Area

Wed, 16 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

In 1985 Harriet Feigenbaum planted three circles of willow trees around a pond formed from coal dust runoff in this strip mining site. Currently maintained as a wetland wildlife preserve, this project symbolizes Feigenbaum's commitment to creating a harmonium between industry and nature. Current reports indicate the site is unkept.

Floating Mesa

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

One of several unusual sculptures in the Amarillo area commissioned by Stanley Marsh 3, a local visionary eccentric and bon-vivant. The intended illusion of the top of the mesa "floating" in the air occasionally is effected when the sky behind it is the right shade of white.

Grand Rapids Project

Tue, 8 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The Grand Rapids Project was made by Robert Morris in 1974 on an eroded hillslope in a city park near downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is known as the first major art earthwork to be supported by government funds, including the National Endowment for the Arts. Construction involved re-contouring the hill and adding paths, one ringing the top of the hill (around a huge, concealed water tank), and another set of paths along the graded face of the hill, which meet in the middle forming a visible "X" on the hillside. Erosion was controlled by a drainage system, with buried pipes. To some degree this piece is a civil works project, where a slope was stabilized, protecting recreational areas below and a storage tank essential to the city's water supply at the top. It is also landscape architecture, as the site has many of the functional and aesthetic elements of a park. It is also like an earthwork, as it is made mostly of shaped earth, and, perhaps more significantly, because it was made by an established artist who has made other earthworks.

Guadalupe River Park

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:22:59 GMT

Flood control site built in 1989-1990 integrated with a wildlife and recreational park with earth art by George Hargreaves Associates.

Isla de Umunnum

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A number of outdoor pieces were built in this park by Heather McGill and John Roloff between 1986 and 1989, as part of the interpretive efforts for the new nature preserve at Elkhorn Slough, near the Central California Coast. "Isla de Umunnum" is the name of the 5-acre island where the sculptures were made ("Umunnum" is Ohlone Indian for "hummingbird"). The most extensive piece is "The Mound" made of layered shells, cut like a cross-section of a midden mound, and connected to a stagnant pool. The pieces are only partially maintained.

Isolated Mass, Circumflex

Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

The ninth of Michael Heizer's "Nine Nevada Depressions" made around the state in 1968. This one is a circular loop made in a dry lake bed surface, at Massacre Dry Lake, near Vyo, Nevada. Six tons of earth was displaced, making a one foot wide trench, around 120 feet long, with the loop being 12 feet in diameter. Commissioned by Robert Scull. Apparently, no traces remain.

Jamesville Quarry

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Located in an unused corner of the massive Jamesville Quarry in upstate New York, this piece was never completed, and has been untouched since 1986. The environment surrounding the piece resembles the erosional canyons of the Southwest in form and scale, but was made instead by human hands and machines, removing the beds of limestone to make cement and aggregate. The intervening years have hardly altered the piece, as human erosion has been virtually non-existent in the restricted-access quarry. Much of the displaced rock on the fringes of the wedge-shaped sculpture is just where it was left when the last stone was moved by William Bennett, the artist who began work on it in 1976. Work slowed to occasional summer visits starting in 1979, when Bennett moved away from the area. He hopes to return to work on the piece in the future, but no longer plans to make the large inverted pyramid form, which was originally intended as the target for the alignment of the existing "wedge." Visitors were meant to walk into the piece starting at the shallow end, following the eight inch wide path (the "keel" of the wedge), for eighty or so feet to the end, at which point the visitor would be six feet under the surface level, facing a stone wall. Turning around to exit, the viewer looks straight down the wedge, outward at a distant target, like a gunsight. A kind of optical instrument, the sculpture looks both inward, into the rock, and outward, into the space of the quarry; a microscope on one end and telescope on the other.

Las Vegas Piece

Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A large, simple etching on the earth, made with four shallow cuts from the six foot blade of bulldozer, two one mile long, two half mile long, forming a square with half mile lines extending. Done in 1969 in the Tula Desert, north of Las Vegas by Walter de Maria. Apparently, no longer visible.

Lightning Field

Fri, 22 Mar 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A piece of land art in the plains of western New Mexico consisting of hundreds of stainless steel poles projecting from the ground. The poles, averaging around 20 feet in height, have been known to attract occasional lightning strikes. The piece was built by the artist Walter De Maria in 1977 to a degree of precision of 1/25th of an inch. Rows of 20 poles extend for one mile, while rows of 16 extend for a kilometer, making a square grid of standard and metric proportions. The pointed tops of the poles meet at an even plane above the ground, said to be exact enough that if a hypothetical piece of glass were placed on the sculpture, all the tips of the poles would touch it. The piece, and much of the land around it, is owned by the Dia Center, of New York, the same organization that owns Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, and has supported other major art land art projects. Visitors stay overnight in an elegantly rustic cabin on the site, after being left stranded there by Dia Center staff.

Merriewold West

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

An exhibition called "Projects in Nature" was held in 1975 on a private estate in rural New Jersey, involving eleven "environmental artists," most of whom constructed some kind of outdoor work on the property. Artists included Carl Andre, Alan Sondheim, John Goodyear, and Clayton Lee. Alice Aycock constructed a subterranean space which could be entered through portals and ladders called "Simple Network for Underground Wells and Tunnels." The site of this piece is now the edge of a horse pasture, and it seems that a feed shed was built on top of the piece, which no doubt still has fragments underground. Richard Fleischner made "Sod Drawing" on the lawn of the mansion, consisting of a few small mounds and a long trench, like a cut in the earth. This piece was also removed by subsequent owners of the property. Debris from the sculptures was dumped in the woods. The only visible fragment on the property are remains left over from George Trakas' "Union Station" piece, consisting of a 144 foot wood bridge and a 106 foot steel bridge which intersected in the woods. As part of the piece, the point of intersection was detonated with a small charge of dynamite.

Mill Creek Canyon Park

Mon, 28 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMT

In this park, east of Kent, is a series of earthworks created by the earth artist Herbert Bayer in 1982. The work consists of a group of grass-covered earthen berms, shaped into large, orderly rings and circular mounds. But the site is also a functional stormwater retention basin, and the works become submerged during storm run-off.

Mother Earth Eco-Sculpture

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Located at Challenger Seven Memorial Park, south of downtown Houston, this earthwork draws on the tradition of the earth as mother metaphor, but with contemporary, feminist intent. It was built in 1997 by women and children, working with the Houston Women's Caucus for Art.

Opus 40

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

A deserted quarry that was transformed into a sculpted environment by a Harvy Fite, a stone sculptor who bought the property. He worked on the six acre project almost single-handedly from the late 1930's to his death in 1976. The result is a serpentine network of walls, paths and terraces, made from the "junk" stone, left in the quarry, placed into formations without mortar. The site is open to the public, and hosts concerts, plays, and other outdoor events.

Partially Buried Woodshed

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Robert Smithson conceived and executed this piece while he was staying at Kent State University for a week as a visiting artist in January, 1970. It was too cold for the 'mud pour' work he had expected to perform, so this substitute was hastily developed by Smithson and some of the students. Intended as an illustration of entropy, dirt was dumped on an empty shed by a backhoe until the center beam of the wood and stucco structure cracked. Before he left the campus, the piece was officially transferred to the University and valued at $10,000, and Smithson said that he expected the piece to just "go back to the land." But many unforeseen events conspired to alter the piece physically and contextually. After Smithson's death in 1973, his widow, Nancy Holt, lobbied to have the shed's remains preserved, but in 1975 it was partially burned by arsonists. Despite their obligations to preserve the piece, University officials considered the remains an eyesore, and over the next decade grounds keepers removed all of the pieces that fell to the ground. By 1984, all that was left was the mound itself (pictured above) and some portions of the foundation. A few months after the piece was "built" the famous Kent State shootings occurred (where students protesting the Vietnam War were killed by National Guardsmen), and soon afterwards someone commemorated the event by painting "May 4 Kent 70" on the woodshed. The lettering, visible from the road and remaining on the shed for years, linked the shed and the "breaking point" of the beam, to the cultural shift that many consider the Kent State shootings to represent. Today the remains are hidden in a grove of trees, most of which were planted some time ago to obscure the ruin. The grove is surrounded by the new Liquid Crystal Materials Science building, a football field, and a parking lot.

Pratt Farm

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMT

Pratt Farm is a private park with numerous sculpted forms composed primarily of mounded earth and arranged rocks, all of which are overgrown and disintegrating. Around 20 distinct pieces were constructed on the 17 acre property by James Pierce, an art historian and photographer (now retired), who created them during the summers between 1970 and 1982. He calls the site a garden of history, and the subjects referenced in the forms range from prehistoric, such as tombs and burial mounds, to more recent historical representations, including a piece called Quebec Expedition, depicting Benedict Arnold's ship in an earthen outline (the ship sailed past the site on the Kennebec River in 1775, on its way to the siege of Quebec). The large Earthwoman sculpture, pictured above, was inspired by the famous Venus of Willendorf, a small prehistoric carving of a woman, which is estimated to be 30,000 years old. Perhaps due to the ancient themes and mythic forms at Pratt Farm, local folklore has recently formed about the place, with stories of satanic rituals performed there. Campsites and beer cans can be found in the wooded fringe, and the more fragile balanced stone and wood pieces have long since been destroyed. Mr. Pierce still owns the property, and it is occasionally, but only partially, mowed. He lives some distance away and rarely visits it now, and expects to sell the property in the future. Depending on the season, the general shape of the Turf Maze is sometimes visible (partially visible in photo above). The triangular labyrinth form was constructed between 1972 and 1974 and is 120 feet long on each side, made by cutting one foot deep ruts in the earth. It is based on the plan of a 17th Century topiary maze.