Nancy Holt's Burial Project Part 3

Obviously I've been thinking a lot about Holt's Burial Project lately (and mapping projects in general) due to dedicating three posts to it. Elise and I laughed about it last week in terms of how we keep seeing it referred to in various publications but it's essentially the same 3-4 sentences paraphrased differently. I did find this new addition from The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography which will merit another post in the not so far future. In addition to maps and photographs of the locales, Holt also included booklets. They "presented a series of maps, beginning with an overall map of the United States, zooming in on the poem's locations, indicated with a dot. The gesture of a personalized poem at the project's heart and the 'lived body' mapping that occurs via the trek to and from the poem make it obvious that this is meant to be a one-of-a-kind experience. The booklets with maps both enable, and are souvenirs of, the individual journeys Holt 'gave' to her friends."

Here is a photograph of one of the booklets - a crude representation contrasted with the one above (which is incidentally, the only map I ever find associated with this project).

More on Nancy Holt's "Buried Poems" & Jan Estep's "Beneath the Surface of Language"

Elise found more information on the Buried Poems from this dated website:

"LOCATION: places such as an unnamed, uninhabited island in the Florida Keys, Arches National Monument Desert in Utah, and at the bottom of the Highlands of Navesink near Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

"Holt gave five people (Michael Heizer, Philip Leider, Carl Andre, John Perrault, and Robert Smithson) a packet of information which allowed them to find and dig up a poem. Each poem was buried in a location which was chosen based on their personality. Included in the packet were such items as maps, photos, very detailed directions for finding the poem, along with either postcards, cut out images, and maybe specimens of leaves or rocks from the site. The recipient would eventually understand his connection with the site. The poems were all buried in vacuum containers which would last long enough for them to dig it up whenever they happened to be near the area."

Of course I would like to know if any of these people ever found their poems - the idea of them sealed in vacuum containers is intriguing though anti-ephemeral just like the vast majority of American Land Art.

My search for more information brought me to Jan Estep's Beneath the Surface of Language. Estep spent two weeks at the Center for Land Use Interpretation residency program to create "a site-specific map/text/photo project featuring the 54-mile backcountry Silver Island Mountain Byway, a BLM-managed route near the Bonneville Speedway just outside of Wendover, Utah."

She comments on Nancy Holt's Buried Poems and John Baldessari's California Map Project - two of my favorite works in the genre of art and mapmaking.



See more of Estep's work here. Image above from Estep's Site #2.

Elise Rorick

Last spring I wrote a proposal for the Honor's Department to fund a research assistant for the semester. Elise is helping me out with Phase 2 as well as writing grants, preparing for exhibitions, etc. I asked Elise to write down five things about herself for the blog and here they are....



5 [or, in retrospect, maybe 8...] things I want the world to know about me (stolen verbatim from a year+ old facebook survey entitled "50 random things about me")

1. I LOVE books. I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing but reading, and probably not read all the books in the world i want! (which is saying something, because I read lightning fast!) my favorites range from Harry Potter (specifically Deathly Hallows), to anything with history in it, to Jane Austen, to Lord of the Flies, to the Brother's Grimm fairy tales, to Peter Pan, and back to anything adventure or fantasy. ok so basically everything. :D

2. My life is a paradox because I want to travel the world and live on the coast, but my friends and family, who I love with all my heart, are all here in Indiana [edit: the midwest]. At the same time though, I think I will be fine for the same reason I'm fine at college. I will make new friends, but the people I love will be right there with me thanks to cell phones and the internet.

3. I am by no stretch of the imagination a morning person. I would like mornings better if they started later. And if people were meant to pop out of bed, we would all sleep in toasters. :P

4. I don't believe in happily ever after. But I do believe in happy.

5. I am witty, sarcastic, clumsy, stubborn, creative, smart, have a great sense of humor, and love living life. I am drawn naturally to people like myself. I am a dork, but I am the coolest dork you will ever meet!

6. My all time favorite band, song, book, and movie are all from England! [coincidence?]

7. I don't particularly like the whole hollywood, media obsessed, completely moral-less, capitalist America.

8. I am 25% Armenian and I love that! I wish I had a cool armenian middle name like my brother, my aunts, my cousin, my grandpa...

... and so Phase Two begins...

Elise and I pulled the map out of the tube tonight and with our trusty Suzaan Boettger "bible," we started annotating. A grant is written (here's hoping and hoping and hoping we get it) and ideas are formulating as to how this trip can unfold.