A List on the Burial/Artist Correspondence Project

Sarah Hobbs, Untitled (Perfectionist)

Who would I send correspondence to after burying an object for in the UK? My initial thoughts include:

1. Nancy Holt (address = check)
2. Ed Ruscha (duh = address = check)
3. Richard Misrach (address = check)
4. Suzaan Boettger (email address - will need to find physical address)
5. Fredericka Hunter and Ian Glennie (address = check)
6. Michael Heizer (need to find address)
7. Rebecca Solnit (will need to find her address).
8. Lucy Lippard (will need to obtain mailing address)

How uncomfortable would some of these people feel to receive this correspondence from strangers (Ruscha, Heizer and Solnit would fit the "stranger" category as I have interacted with the rest at one point in my life)? But do I really care? Yes... but will I do it anyway? We all know the answer to that. How many lists will I make before then? Will I save them? Will I count them? Will I photograph them? Will I dig myself into a hole? No pun intended. No I'll keep thinking about it until it's "perfect" as fortunate or unfortunate as that may be.

Nancy Holt's Burial Project

Nancy Holt, The Last Map Used to Locate Buried Poem Number 4 for Michael Heizer, 1969-71



Nancy Holt, Buried Poem Number 4 for Michael Heizer The Double O, 1971 & Buried Poem Number 4 for Michael Heizer, Dark Angel through Double O Arch, 1971

From Phaidon's Land and Environmental Art:

"These poems were private artworks. Holt dedicated the poems to five different people (Michael Heizer, Philip Leider, Carl Andre, John Perrault, and Robert Smithson) and chose the remote sites according to certain physical, spatial, and atmospheric qualities which would evoke a particular person for her. The poems were buried in vacuum containers, and the recipient received a map which contained all the necessary information for the poem to be found and dug up. The map provided Holt with both a physical location and characteristics which she could relate to a specific person, as well as a symbolic space in which to construct the meaning presented in the poems. Along with the instructions on how to find the site she included details of the history, geology, flora, and fauna of the site as well as maps, pictures, and specimens of rocks and leaves."

I have been thinking a lot about Holt's Burial/Mapping project recently as a way to incorporate artist correspondence with interring objects. We are working hard researching the second leg of our journey and I of course, want to continue exploring the object in remote locales. I am not interested in writing poems or cataloging the flora and fauna of the environment but I AM intrigued by responding to something within that place and referring it to the artists who I will send a letter to. The artists will be ones inspirational to our project yet there will be no response anticipated.

Artist Correspondence: Our First Response

Lucy Lippard wrote us back! She wants to see our project! Yay! Obviously the trick is to have Nancy write all the artist correspondence as I tend to scare everyone away (or they sic the director of their foundation on us based on a letter I wrote to James Turrell).

"Hi, sorry so long answering but was out of town yet again. Love the Three weeks piece, and am curious about what the images are. Can you send me some? Thanks, Lucy."

Before I get too carried away with the Clemson trip... I better finish the Midwest SPE Conference

First up... Lucy Lippard Lecture. We were running late, Elise & I ran out of the car to unsuccessfully obtain our conferences badges, no sweater in a cold lecture hall or pen and paper. These are a couple notes I typed up on the i-phone but wish I had remembered more.

• "A place is a 1000 places."

• Find the Amanda Ross-Ho quote on the present.

• Photographs needing to be printed bigger parallels the American obesity epidemic.

• "What time is this place?"

• "Deep maps:" How the rings affect the center and how it ripples.



Lure of the Local was a favorite book of mine in graduate school thanks to Li Rader. She meant to leave this comment on the blog ages ago but emailed it instead: "Ok, it's time for you to add to your library 'The Lure of the Local' by Lucy Lippard (1997). I bought it in Tucson in '98 and I'm sure (though 13 years old ?!! Can it be?!) is absolutely something you would like to read (especially considering your last post re: Indiana, home, et centera - error intentional [duh]). I'm sure Dave Hickey would scoff at such a suggestion which is, all the more reason, to suggest it! LR in VT"

I bought Lure of the Local when I was traveling back and forth to New Zealand to maintain my residency in graduate school and re-evaluating it with my present thoughts on place and home is long overdue.

After the lecture, Nancy and I talked to Lucy, obtained her email address and at last, will legitimately begin more artist correspondence!

Nancy's email to Lucy from the Sleep Inn in Clemson, SC two nights ago:

Dear Lucy,

Thank you so much for coming to the SPE in Kalamazoo. It was an honor to hear you speak and to meet you at the end of your talk. Your work has influenced my life and I thought I would follow up on our brief encounter with this email. I thought you might be interested in seeing our latest collaborative project. Below is our artist statement and our website is www.earthworksnearyou.com.

Thank you very much for your consideration to this work. We would love to hear your insights if you find it interesting enough that it lingers in your thoughts.

With admiration and respect,
Nancy Douthey

In any case, Nancy and I have decided that our next goal with this project is a residency at C.L.U.I.


Amelia Morris, 5 MacMillan Gardens, What Was Left, 2010 from the Pin-Up Exhibition

Another highlight included our first joint portfolio reviews. We looked at sculptural/installation work by Matt (I wish I wrote down his last name) from Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska, Dominique from Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan and Mike Cook from Grand Rapids Community College. Mike had fascinating Gregory Crewdson/Phillip Lorca diCorcia-esque portraits using lights to recreate pandora's boxes transporting his subject's back to their workplaces. I failed to photograph anything that had to do with a portfolio review, an oversight that I would remedy at Clemson.

Our talk was a big old LET DOWN (the anti-dynamic duo) but we took a lot of notes on what we could improve upon and even attended a couple more lectures critiquing the overall delivery of the lecture itself as well as the content. It was a learning experience for both of us. The most positive aspect of the talk was meeting Travis Shaffer (we share a similar influence in Ed Ruscha - more coming soon on his photo zine, Rural Route Two), Nicole Croy from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Jamie Miles who teaches photography at Taylor University.

Without fail, every time I speak at an SPE conference, Lori Nix also lectures at the same time. I missed her talk but was able to catch up with her at the open portfolio walk-through. I have an inherent fear of the open portfolio walk-through but doing it with someone proved to be far easier. I'm really proud of my students who represented themselves so well that multiple strangers commented on it. When Nancy and I head to Atlanta for yet another talk, we will have this down (and I will provide more photo documentation!).

Artist Stalking Part 3: Nancy's Letter to Michael Heizer

This post is five months overdue. As this project continues... we foresee an artist's book dedicated entirely to our one way artist correspondence (Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and now Michael Heizer). Nancy sent this letter to the Dia Foundation asking to forward it to Heizer. No word as of yet (surprise!).

Dear Ed Ruscha,

My friend & collaborator Nancy Douthey and I recently completed an earthworks pilgrimage throughout the Western US. We spent three weeks traveling through Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas making art in response to the site-specific works we saw. In addition to being inspired by Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, James Turrell, Michael Heizer, and Walter De Maria, we were also influenced by you.

How does Ed Ruscha fit into the genre of Earthworks? Much of our project deals with what lies "in between" - the landscape and the concept of "place" (literally as seen in the motels where we stay and figuratively as in our roles in each location). This is where your artwork makes its most prominent entry.

My main point in writing you is admittedly a little self-aggrandizing. If I may be so bold, I would like to invite you to take a look at our blog documenting the journey & our sources of inspiration (all to be developed into finished works of art in the immediate future).



At the following link, you will find that Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass became a study in swimming pools and fake doughnuts. Ideally I am searching for a large, fake, chocolate cake (in the style of Wayne Thiebaud) and plan on photographing that as soon as I find the perfect one. Nancy and I wanted to combine an object with the pool that was just as unlikely but less threatening.

Of particular interest is this link where Nancy and I spend our day at Bryce Canyon searching for you and eventually obtain your autograph. That remains one of our favorite projects of the entire trip and certainly opened my mind to exploring new avenues in the art making process.



Your artists’ books have always been an influence long before I catalogued Ian & Fredericka’s collection at Texas Gallery. Nancy and I are making a series of half a dozen booklets documenting the “in between” and publications like Thirty-four Parking Lots are certainly something that we aspire toward.

Although this has nothing to do with Nancy’s and my collaboration (but since this is my one time chance at telling you), your Untitled painting from 1986 of an elephant trudging up a hillside is my all time favorite work of art. I first saw it at your retrospective at the Fort Worth Modern and it continues to haunt me to this day.



Thank you for taking the time to read this and for being such an inspiration for both of us.

Sincerely,

J. Russell & N. Douthey

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).

PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE AT THE BEEP: SORRY JAMES

JUNE 19th I'm back on the map. WITH PHONE IN HAND...I thought after mine fell in the toilet I would just wait till the new iphone with video came out! 

TURRELL LETTER UPDATE (perhaps including an exclusive invitation to the following)

Letter to James Turrell

Dear James Turrell,

I have thought long and hard about how to compose this letter over the past few days. The fact that your address was acquired illicitly makes me believe that I should tell only the truth (leaving my co-conspirator to reveal how she obtained it if she deems appropriate).

Like many people, I have dreamed of making the artistic pilgrimage across the West beginning with Spiral Jetty in Utah and ending at Amarillo Ramp in Texas. Last summer while standing in Robert Morris’s Untitled Reclamation Project in Kent, Washington, I decided that it must happen and the sooner the better. Four summers before while ascending Spiral Hill above Broken Circle in Emmen, The Netherlands I had that same urge, but life passing and brutally changing in the years between, shoved that thought aside. Last year my dear friend and artistic collaborator, Nancy Douthey, and I decided that this would be the summer we would complete the journey.

Over the past few months, Nancy and I have brainstormed several ideas on how to visit Roden Crater. “Plan A2”, as it is now known, was to show up in a white truck, dressed as construction workers with a Styrofoam cooler of beer as a bribe. There was a lot of debate between ice cold beer vs. ice tea and we finally decided on both. Plan B features calling a pilot in Sedona who would fly a banner over the crater and your house asking permission to visit. We could be included in the flight for $300 and though that is a bit steep for our budget, we considered it. Plan C involves writing you a personal check for an exorbitant amount of money, knowing full well that it would bounce if cashed. Plan D involved perusing a satellite photograph of the crater and all the Forest Service Roads in the immediate vicinity with my stepfather who has a vast collection of Geological Survey maps. He outlined what he thought would be a good trek away from the main road. I don’t feel comfortable with Plan D but thought I would investigate anyway.

I have endlessly researched how other people have obtained access. I even emailed Suzaan Boettger, author of Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the 1960s and asked for her advice. A couple of my acquaintances at the Center for Creative Photogrpahy were involved in a legitimate tour through the Museum of Northern Arizona. I heard about a group of high school students getting in, friends of your children, and so on. I have also read the appalling accounts of people sneaking in to find closed doors and leaving footprints all over the carefully combed interior. I am not interested in repeating the latter.

This weekend it dawned on me that Plan A1 should have been to simply ask. I imagine you have heard every plea and excuse under the sun to entice you to allow entrance into Roden Crater; how the experience will transform people’s lives if they could only see it. Part of me wants to tell you that and to express how profound every visit I’ve ever had to a Skyspace has been. On the opposite end, you are the only artist whose work I have ever viewed that has physically made me ill (the Pleiades at the Mattress Factory induced nausea). I want to tell you about two small details that occurred while immersed in the Skyspace at the Friends Meeting House or The Light Inside (both of which I visited regularly while living in Houston) but I realize I am falling into the same category of all the other people that must contact you and request permission.

Nancy and I have emailed the Skystone Foundation but am hoping that direct contact with you will prove to be more helpful. I cannot offer much in return except a promise to abide by any restrictions you may have as to what is published about this visit. I realize that I am not asking months in advance either and for that I apologize. We would be open to the 29th or 30th of June or the 1st July 2009 if at all possible.

Thank you, Mr. Turrell, for considering our request.

Sincerely,

J. Russell & N. Douthey