This post is from April 2, 2008
Joey Cocciardi
Joey Cocciardi





















































In 'Zen for Head', Paik dips his head in paint and draws a line on paper
In 1970, Robert Smithson created Spiral Jetty in the water along the Northeast shore of the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Spiral Jetty involved moving more than 6 thousand tons of earth and stone to make a spiral form 1500 feet long. The form recalls the shape of salt crystals and microscopic organisms of the lake. Spiral jetty certainly has as its precedent the ancient earth mounds, like those in the Ohio region. Smithson leased 10 acres of land at the lake to make spiral Jetty. Smithson described his sensations about the site as "to suggest an immobile cyclone" and "A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement." From that the form of Spiral Jetty evolved. Smithson also learned of legend that described an underground channel that connected the Salt lake to the ocean at a point in the middle of the lake that revealed itself as a whirlpool. The metaphor of the spiral worked at microscopic scale, larger scale and at the level of folklore.
In 1968, Walter De Maria made a land drawing called Mile Long Drawing in the Mojave Desert, his first earthwork. De Maria's work was typically less permanent or less intrusive on the landscape than Michael Heizer's or Robert Smithson's - somewhat ecologically minded.In 1977, Walter De Maria created Lightning Field in New Mexico. Lightning field is a series of 400 stainless steel poles covering an area of one mile by approximately one kilometer. The tops of the poles are all at the same level, and the poles average a height of about 20 feet. The human population of the region is low and the incidence of lightning is high. The conditions were ideal to achieve a celebration of the power and magnificence of lightning.The grid form of the rods and the one mile dimension, mark the space and recall the grid that organizes much of the United States. The orientation of the tops of the rods gives reference to the shape/ or topography of the land below, and the organization brings the sky and earth together.
