Michael Heizer Sculpture Project/Profile

[Bill Smith <besmith@zzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Bill, that was interesting. I have visited mounds in my state of
Minnesota, but they aren't as large and sculptural as those in Ohio.
This discussion of man-made works and longevity, the future and earth
art brought to mind something I read years ago in Harper's Magazine. I
can't find the article online, but it might be worth looking up if one
is interested. The article is all about contemporary man and our
legacy to the future. Here is the citation. Burdick, Alan, "The Last
Cold-War Monument." Harper's Magazine. (August, 1992) 62-67.

What the article is about is a project at WIPP, which is the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant for storage of nuclear waste for the next 10,000
years or more. It is foreseen that English won't be the language used,
that the nuclear hazard sign will be meaningless, and so the project
is to conceptualize earth art that can be put over the site which will
tell future people that the spot is dangerous. The images in section
4.2 of the document are interesting.

http://downlode.org/etext/wipp/#designoptions

A similar idea comes from James Acord. "Drawing on the idea of the
medieval reliquary - an ornamental container for a religious artefact
such as a shard of the true cross or a lock of the hair of a saint -
Acord began a work he entitled 'Monstrance for a Grey Horse'. It was
to be carved from a single block of granite and would depict a horse's
skull sitting atop of a five foot trapezoidal column, an archetypal
totem of fear and death. This was appropriate, because deep inside the
monolith a container of dangerous radioactive material was to be
stored, making the sculpture into an actual waste depository. A
metallic headpiece fitted over the skull and made of a metal
transmuted in the heart of a reactor would hint as to the technical
nature of the contents."

http://www.jbf.dial.pipex.com/art_tech_ec_files/acord.htm

Here is an image of "The Herm", as proposed by James Acord as a
storage container/warning/monument to nuclear waste.

http://www.jbf.dial.pipex.com/stills_files/book_of_ash/pages/The%20Herm_tif.htm

Lastly, along the same lines of earth art and our legacy to the future
is a book from Johns Hopkins University Press called Bravo 20: The
Bombing of the American West, by Richard Misrach with Myriam Weisang
Misrach, Creating the North American Landscape $75.00 hardcover ISBN:
0-8018-4064-3

The book is both a document showing what we have made in one area of
the west and a proposal to make it an earth art site pretty much as
is. Here are two comments from the book page at the Press website.
"For eighteen months in the mid-eighties, photographer Richard Misrach
roamed through the natural beauty and man-made devastation of Bravo 20
[bombing range], while Myriam Weisang Misrach researched the history
of military expansionism—and local protest— in the West. The result is
a book that not only documents the ongoing battle for Bravo 20, but
offers a suggestion on what best to do with the burst shells, bombed-
out buses, automobile hulls, and other naval detritus: leave it right
where it is."--Mother Jones "Perhaps the most stunning photo book I've
seen this year."--Kurt Wolf, San Francisco Bay Guardian

http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/1240.html

Bill Marsh wrote: