Arne Erisoty's Sunset Over Spiral Jetty

Via.

From the website: "In dwindling twilight at an August day's end, these broad dark bands appeared in the sky for a moment, seen from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jettyon the eastern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake. Outlined by rays of sunlight known as crepuscular rays, they are actually shadows cast by clouds near the distant western horizon, the setting Sun having disappeared from direct view behind them. The cloud shadows are parallel, but seem to converge in the distance because of perspective. Coiled in the salt-encrusted lake surface, Smithson's most famous earthwork provides a dramatic contrast to the converging lines. The Spiral Jetty was constructed in 1970, when the water level was unusually low and was completely submerged in a few years as the level rose. Now just above water again, it has spent much of its existence submerged in the briny lake."

"Insecurity Zone" by Nikolaj Recke

Just discovered this video on youtube. It's painful to watch in some cases (just like I imagine Vito Acconci's Security Zone to be). The jetty is so difficult to walk on to begin with that I could not imagine doing it blindfolded.



The synopsis:
"A blindfolded walk on Spiral Jetty. In the summer of 2009 Nikolaj Recke visited one of the absolute masterpieces of Land Art, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1971), located in Great Salt Lake in Utah. Blindfold, he went, with the help of instructions, all the way out of the spiral shaped and cliff-paved quay. The video paraphrase is a known recording of Smithson himself running off the quay immediately after its completion, by paraphrasing another canonical work from the period, Vito Acconci's Security Zone (1971), where the artist, blindfolded and hands tied behind his backs allowed himself to be led around the New York City pier area by a stranger. Insecurity Zone can be seen partly as a personal tribute to the two works, both as an unpretentious commentary to contemporary art's eternal attempt to move closer to art history. It depicts the history of art as a mental and physical spaced where it is difficult to find a foothold, all the time that we move in spirals, and it is not to determined whether one is led or blindfold.

The Road to Spiral Jetty Gets an Upgrade (!)

".... Thanks to $18,000 from the Box Elder County Tourism Tax Advisory Board, road crews are currently reworking part of the Jetty road, especially the last two miles, which has, until now, been a solid bed of large, jagged basalt boulders. The rock-strewn road made even maintaining that stretch impossible for county equipment, according to Road Supervisor Bill Gilson. The county also hired C.A. Johnson Trenching out of Springville to bring in their quarter-million dollar rock grinder to turn the black boulders into much smaller stones. The grinder spent about three days churning up the roadway to the Jetty, leaving in its wake a softer and more manageable surface..."

Ellen Cook

Now will the Heorot carry this?

via Tyler Green.

More on preserving Spiral Jetty

From the New York Times
(though I am not a strong proponent of this since it wasn't what Smithson wanted to do in the first place).

Sunrise over Spiral Jetty

from the Getty Museum.

ART 21 on Conservation and Spiral Jetty

Check out this article.

Of particular interest is Francesca Esmay explaining how contemporary documentary photographs are made to monitor the Jetty: "To photo-document Spiral Jetty, we used a tethered helium balloon about 8-10 feet in diameter, attached to a digital camera that would take an image every few seconds until the camera’s memory card filled up. Each of us let out string from a spool and sent the balloon up anywhere from 50 to 600 meters, depending on what we were trying to capture and other factors such as wind and amount of helium to give lift."

Here is one image with more available to see on the link above.




Esmay also explains that horrendous roped off area we were wondering about during our visit:

"There have been unfortunate examples of visitors being insensitive. We recently had a college art professor who invited their students to make an interpretive artwork at the site. They cast a concrete pad and erected a viewing station with a didactic sign pointing towards the Jetty. It is sort of unimaginable to me that someone could be so insensitive, but we do not have oversight on location, so it is impossible to supervise visitors while they are there."

Tyler Green posts new information on the threats to Spiral Jetty this week as well.

Thanks Frederick Barthelme!

One interesting facet that has come from this blog is learning that other artists do indeed google search themselves and visit websites such as this (Whew! I am not alone in this potentially narcissistic activity). Recently, my student Shannon posted an entry about her trip to Niagara citing Alec Soth as an inspiration and he sent her an email in response (by the way Alec, if you happen to read this, thanks for introducing me to the concept of "Googlegangers" - a term I've used often in the past couple years). In addition, Frederick Barthelme found our blog and declared the Spiral Jelly sentiments as "sweet" which made my day somewhere in the middle of Utah when Nancy and I first learned about it.

Nancy made a video about peanut butter and Spiral Jetty - an ode to Frederick Barthelme in a sense. There aren't any stills from it as of yet so here is the first thing that came up in a google search when typing in "peanut butter spoonful." I cannot quite bring myself to interact with peanut butter on any level after making that video so maybe one day in the far future, I will replace this one with an image of my own.



The mere fact that people I admire and refer to on this blog may actually find themselves here one day, interests me greatly. So just in case one particular artist does not, I've decided to write him and inform him that he inspired us on multiple occasions over the past few weeks. Why not publish one more "artist fan letter" after the James Turrell fiasco? This road trip has taught me that I don't have much to lose so I should go for it...

Soon.... Dear Ed Ruscha,


(not Perry AKA Ed Rowlands as Ed Ruscha).

A couple things about Sun Tunnels

Nancy and I arrived in Wendover, Utah in the late afternoon after spending significant time at the Bonneville Salt Flats. We jumped into the freezing hotel pool, ate an overpriced buffet at the Rainbow (note to self: buffet dinners at casinos are a waste of money for vegetarians), and drove rather quickly to Lucin, Utah as we were trying to arrive well before the setting sun. We encountered a very large puddle of water that Nancy promptly donned her moustache and Michael Heizer jacket to ford because "this is a man's job" and John Ott's "use common sense" was ringing in our ears. Fortunately it wasn't as deep as it looked (but the rental car suggested otherwise = whoops!).

I have had this vision of seeing how close we could drive to an earthwork since we started this trip and that was solved rather quickly upon our arrival - Sun Tunnels was the ideal candidate. Afterward, what we quickly found was disturbing. Someone within the last 24 hours had driven through the middle of the artwork and got stuck. Their solution was to use all of their car mats in an effort to provide traction to escape the deep pit they were quickly making in the soft earth. We are not sure how they escaped but they left all of their mats inside one of the tunnels, enough tire gouges to provide a distraction, and someone wrote in the mud in between the absent wheel base "Fuck Your Karma." HIGHLY ANNOYING.

The sun was quickly falling and we were frantically running around trying to photograph a burial and the general vicinity before stationing ourselves in the tunnels to see the setting sun. We were very happy that the sun did indeed fall in nearly the same location as it would have on the solstice two days earlier.

I set to work on a collection box and Nancy began filling the tire gouges in a performance of endurance - positioning dirt, removing the text written in the mud, and "cleaning up" the area to the best of her ability. About 20 minutes later, fatigued, she stopped. Unfortunately we didn't have large shovels to smooth over the rest of the earth.

We stayed well into the evening, catching a sliver of a moon setting in the western night sky and a planet we guessed was Venus (but that was just an assumption). There were a couple sound recordings - screams and whistle blowing. I tried very hard to deposit the rock I brought from Spiral Jetty on top of one of the concrete tubes but failed each time I tossed it over to hear it roll off the other side. In frustration, I hurled it into the middle of the tubes announcing, "It is now here" as soon as it fell. I don't know what compelled me to bring a piece of Robert Smithson to Nancy Holt - it resides in the mud that Nancy D. tried to fill and as a result, I brought a cracked, dried portion to bring to Double Negative - carrying a piece of one to the next. I will figure out where this is going but for now, I don't have an answer.

Seeing Sun Tunnels at the time it was meant to be viewed changed everything for me. Sitting down at the edge of the most westerly tube, catching my breath, and watching the sun dip below the horizon was an eye opener. Wishing we had more time to spend before night fell is my only regret.

We stopped along the road outside Montello, Nevada to stare at the Milky Way lying on the shoulder of the road watching a satellite fly overhead. I had not seen such a clear night sky with relatively little light pollution in years. I will take back the memory of the stars with me - though we did not see them inside Nancy Holt's tubes, we were able to experience the sunset and that was all that I needed to qualify visit this as a success.

DIPS AT SPIRAL JETTY

THEN AND NOW

After parking the rental car 1/2 mile away and walking toward the jetty, I was under the impression that the dense pile of rocks in the water had to be Smithson's artwork but was taken aback because it was not covered with salt as it was the last time I visited four years ago. The rocks, from a distance, looked as fresh as the jetty in the photographs from 1970 - black basalt removed from the hillside and deposited in the water before the salt and algae would alter the rocky surface. Given the large amount of rain that had fallen in the last week, we were not even sure we would see it and were very surprised that not only was it visible, but that the water didn't even reach the beginning of the "arm." There were sand banks in the middle which allowed us to walk across if we wanted to without even getting our feet wet.

I asked Nancy to recreate a photograph that was taken of me at the jetty in 2005 just for comparison. I am in awe at how much it had changed and would conclude that it looked more beautiful covered with salt and pink water surrounding the entire sculpture HOWEVER I enjoyed not getting my feet wet or cut on the salt deposits. After this visit, I also felt like I had experienced it more in the manner that Smithson had when it was first constructed.

We spent six hours constantly working on video projects, photographs, and performances: Nancy's hair twirl and spinning in the middle of the jetty, eating peanut butter, dipping water color paper, burying an object, collecting rocks, and immersing ourselves in the land.

The element of scale is a much discussed topic so far this week... it is shocking how distance doesn't look as far as it is until one of us walks 25' away and instantly looks small. I wasn't standing that far away from Nancy when the above photograph was taken but I could have been half way across the Great Salt Lake.

As we packed up our pink inner tube and gear in preparation for our walk back, an airplane did a flyby, circling the jetty twice. We waved and thought they must think our fluorescent pink inner tube spoiled their view. In fact, that pink inner tube has helped me overcome any hesitancy I may have had in photographing these spaces because now I know full well, that whatever anyone else may have taken pictures of here, they did not include a pink dress performance in the middle of the spiral as they did on this day.

BLACK, BLUE, AND PINK

Spiral Jetty.

We had arrived that day not sure what to expect. I think I was excited and nervous all at the same time.

Excited to see this work of art that has been replicated in most every art history book I've ever had on contemporary art.

Nervous about what we would really see contrasted to that of which I thought I knew and what I would do.

I had packed most of my performance gear but I had not completely understood my relationship to the work and how my own interest and process would work itself out. I took one look at the blue clear sky, a blue I often search for in Houston, and knew the pink wig and dress must come out. The wind perfect for the shaking of my pink hair. A pink wig gesturing "no." A reference to pop culture and more specifically Britney Spears and her own relationship with public judgment, ideas of celebrity and I could go on. (but I'll keep that brief)

The hot pink dress as an object itself was perfect padding for sitting on the rocks, keeping cool, and allowed for me to move around easily; a piece of gear more hikers should consider, old 80's prom dresses cut off short. I had planned on spinning till I fell. Spinning into a dizzy stumble. I had videotaped my walk around the jetty (which ended up not recording at all) the twists, the curves enough to create a disorienting effect. The black basalt rocks were like broken chunks of dark chocolate. The work seemed to welcome my intrusion of color. The landscape had allowed me to enter as another force that exists within this same space. I felt small but I felt seen.

Six hours at the jetty, I blew up the fluorescent pink inner tube, spun around in the center like one of those ballerinas in a jewelry box, shook my head till i couldn't do it anymore, ate a peanut butter popsicle with Jacinda, collected rocks in white lunch sacks, and documented Jacinda's work and ourselves - just to name a few.

The time here went by so fast, the six hours could have easily turned into nine, maybe longer. But we had the interruption of the raging mosquitoes and a group of sisters cackling about. These occurrences are a natural wave that washes over the entire environment, changing with each passing second.

Burial 001: Stack of Papers at Spiral Jetty

Hot Pink at Spiral Jetty

SIX HOURS AT SPIRAL JETTY, ROZEL POINT, UTAH

The roped off area where visitors can stand in queue to view a freshly planted Spiral Jetty sign in case the work is under water.





The couple before us (their first visit as Salt Lake City residents) relayed that it was the first time in a long time that water was touching the top of the jetty.





The trail of collecting bags... Other items we found on the jetty: a no longer white kid's sock, a shredded brown glove, gum on a rock, a half eaten snake, and a mirror shard.











Grass along the road back to Golden Spike National Park just before sunset.

Sneak Preview

STUDIO VISIT ON THE GO

GOLDEN SPIKE NATIONAL PARK, UTAH

"Oh you are one of those people," said John Ott when we told him we were touring the earthworks. He doesn't understand the draw (though people were there from Italy earlier this week) - "a waste of gas to move a bunch of rocks around" to be precise.

26 Days to Go: Diorama, Nesting Boxes, & Even More on "Spiral Jetty"

Hannah and I brainstormed ideas on the diorama. There is a meeting scheduled for Thursday to go over the materials and organize the calendar. Chet and Mary will be helping us create the case (modeled on Joseph Beuys's vitrines and wanting it to be eye level). The goal is to have the outside built and the topography in place before I leave on the 21st June.



I am also investigating the idea of building "nesting boxes" to encase parts of the artwork that I send back. They will have a direct relationship to the form of the diorama.

While flipping through my notebook, I came across something I hadn't seen in a very long time... a tiny photograph of Vik Muniz hovering over his piece Brooklyn, New York, from 1998.





Directions to Spiral Jetty.

I also ran across the highlights from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty text from 1972 that related directly to the landscape I first saw during the 2005 visit. They are below interspersed with some more versions of the artwork.



"As we traveled, the valley spread into an uncanny immensity unlike the other landscape we had seen...Old piers were left high and dry.... The mere sight of the trapped fragments of junk and waste transported one into a world of modern prehistory..."



"Two dilapidated shacks looked over a tired group of oil rigs... Pumps coated with black stickiness rusted in the corrosive air.... The site gave evidence of a succession of man-made systems mined in abandoned hopes."



"Under shallow pinkish water is a network of mud cracks supporting the jigsaw puzzle that comprises the salt flats.... Size determines an object but scale determines art.... On the slopes of Rozel Point I closed my eyes, and the sun burned crimson through the lids.... My movie would end in sunstroke...."

Spiral Jelly

The IMA Gallery Soap Box Lecture performance photographs.


Photos by Hannah Barnes.