Wednesday, December 3, 2008

MAPPING BEGINS: ROBERT MORRIS




2 comments:

j. russell said...
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j. russell said...

The Art Inventories Catalog from the Smithsonian has this posted about Morris's piece:

"Funded with a National Endowment for the Arts, Art in Public Places grant of $30,000 given in 1979 to the King County Arts Commission. The work was conceived and constructed in 1979 as part of a regional earthworks symposium, "Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture," in which seven artists discussed and created reclamation landscape art. The King County Arts Commission elected to create Robert Morris' proposal at a former gravel pit, Johnson Pit #30, which the artist selected. The Morris proposal involved regrading the 4.5 acre site, leaving a "ghost forest" of fifteen, eight-foot tall alder tree stumps. In 1984, Barbara Swift designed a viewing area for the project.
From 1994 to 1997, in consultation with the artist, restoration of the site resulting in a new entrance and viewing area, which replaced the original Barbara Swift design. The new design features a 1/4 mile perimeter trail with a bench designed by Morris, stairways allowing access into the work, and new signs with interpretive text. The restoration also replaced the fifteen alder tree stumps, which over time had decayed, with fifteen logs of yellow cedar harvested and transported to the site. Two catch basins were also added to direct water runoff.
The original site signage, which appeared on a broken bulldozer blade, read: Earth Work Sculpture Robert Morris/A Land Reclamation Project of the King County Arts Commission, 1979 Earth Work Symposium. Following the restoration, the bulldozer blade was replaced with a glacial boulder, and the signage was replaced with interpretive text that includes site facts derived from a lecture given by the artist in 1979."