Site Report No. 13: Crazy Horse Memorial & Mount Rushmore, SD

Our first stop in South Dakota, through the Black Hills is Crazy Horse Memorial, 17 miles from Mount Rushmore.  When and if it is completed it will be the largest sculpture in the world at 563 ft. high and 641 ft. long.  Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski won first prize, by popular vote, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  This brought him attention from Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. He wrote,  “My fellow chiefs and I wanted the white man to know that the red man has great heroes also.”  Ziolkowski started blasting the mountain in 1948.

The size of this work in progress is staggering.  In the great distance, I can see the face of the Sioux warrior, Crazy Horse in profile.  Also visible is the hole that represents the space between the figure’s arm and the top of the horse’s neck.  Seeing the stone model helps visitors to visualize the finished sculpture.  At this time there is little opportunity to explore the sculpture by walking around the base.

We pull into the upper deck parking area for Mount Rushmore and there they are.  In magnitude, in strong southeast light casting shadows describes the chiseled planes of each figure’s face.  (But why can’t we climb around the sculpture like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, 1959)?  This massive project was the dream of state historian, Doane Robinson who initially wanted sculptor Gutzon Borglum to carve western heroes.  But Borglum thought national heroes might be a bigger draw for tourists.  Borglum selected the sight for its height, direct sunlight, and consistency of the granite.  While visiting his studio at the site, I look at an enormous plaster model.  The model included more of the figure’s bodies, arms, and hands.  The rock formation made it impossible for Borglum to realize this idea.  I wonder how different Mount Rushmore might have looked if he had.  The only figure that has some semblance of a body is George Washington. The outline of his lapel is clearly seen.  I like the rough texture of the upper body made to look like hand chiseling but probably done with a jackhammer.  400 men worked on for 14 years starting in 1927.  One of the most intriguing facts for me about the site is that Borglum calculated that the granite would erode 1” every 10,000 years so he added 3” to the figures features. In effect, the work will be completed in 30,000 years.

Visiting both of these sites contrasted sharply with visiting Land Art or Earthworks sites.  At Double Negative, Sun Tunnels, Spiral Jetty we encountered no other visitors.  We were able to have personal, individual experiences walking in and around the environments at our own pace.  The experience at Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore was highly controlled and a very commercial enterprise.

Sadly, this is the last site report of the American Land Art Tour.  Thanks for following the great adventure.  Happy Trails!

Site Report No. 12: Legend Rock, WY

I always had a “thing” for Wyoming.  Maybe it’s the bucking bronco on the license plate.  Maybe it’s the buffalo.  Or maybe it’s my idea of the American West.  As a teenager, I wrote that I would someday live in Wyoming.  Maybe I will because my imagined version of the place squared with reality.  It is covered with magnificent mountains, ranges, and high plains. 

We stay in Thermopolis (Greek for hot city) in Central Wyoming.  We are here to visit some of the oldest examples of prehistoric rock art.  Carved over a period of a thousand years in Big Horn Basin, next to Cottonwood Creek, on the red sandstone cliffs are some 300 petroglyphs of people and animals:  Legend Rock.  But before we drive 30 miles out of town to see the site, we take a soak in the hot mineral springs that Thermopolis is known for.  Not to be missed.  Then at the State Bath House we pick up a key to locked gate to Legend Rock.  The woman behind the desk tells us to look out for rattlesnakes and lock the gate behind us after we enter.  Arriving at the deep red, purple mountains we walk along a narrow path filled with sagebrush and boulders that look like perfect homes for snakes.  A chipmunk nimbly scales the cliff face. 

The wall is filled for 800 yards with detailed, graphic etchings of humans, birds, rabbits, and elk.  They were carved and pecked and look like shadow shapes or silhouettes.  Tall, anthromorphic figures like the one seen in the photo above with the “U” shape head date to about 2,000 years ago.  The oldest images (10,000 years ago) at the site are carvings of an antelope, human figure, and adult hand.  The handprint was pecked into the rock.  What do they mean?  Some reasons might be religious, documentation of events, a calendar or inventory, or maybe the artist just wanted to draw.  The Shoshone people or their predecessors may have made the images.  They believe that humans did not make the petroglyphs but the spirits they embody did.  It was a mysterious and deeply profound site.

Later that day, we drove to Devils Tower to watch the sunset and starry night.  (Remember the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1978)?  And check out John’s a-mazing photo.  We meet some climbers who describe the top of the tower being flat and grassy.  There are also chipmunks and snakes living there.  I’ve seen the chipmunks climb but how did the snakes get up there?  As night falls, we watch the headlamps of climbers descending the tower. 

Site Report No. 11: Spiral Jetty, UT

Fifty miles west of the Sun Tunnels past a quarry, a manufacturer of rockets, Golden Spike National Historic Site (where the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was placed), 15 miles further of dirt road, over cattle guards we see mountains and the deep violet hue of a lake.  It is a hue I have never seen before.  At Rozel Point on the Great Salt Lake partially under the surface of the water there is a pre-historic creature, coiled.  It feels like it is a growing, living thing but there is not much alive in the saltiest, deadliest lake in America.  Instead it is the Earthwork of Robert Smithson called Spiral Jetty.  (Sun Tunnels artist Nancy Holt was his wife).  The water is tinged red (Smithson looked for water the color of tomato soup).  Bacteria gives the lake this constant color.  Red algae and brilliant red brine shrimp also thrive here.  I climb down to shore over the black basalt rocks.  As I get close to water it is blush pink and filled with tiny red shrimp.  The sand is fossilized brine shrimp.  Hundreds of small sand flies are also on the shore.  It is altogether a weird and other worldly landscape. 

When Smithson created the work in 1970 the waters were unnaturally low in the lake.  By 1976 the jetty was submerged for decades.  It resurfaced in 2002 but the water levels vary from year to year and season to season.  The lake levels have been high the past few months so I could not walk out on it as I would a pier.  In photographs when it does reveal itself, the black rocks are glistening white by a heavy deposit of salt.  Smithson had a “fascination with the coming and going of things.”  He knew the jetty would be covered for long periods of time.  Interestingly, the sculpture seems like a riff, a parody on a nearby now abandoned industrial oil rig jetty.  But after reading so much about and looking at photos of the sculpture, the surrounding landscape does not appear as bleak as I imagined.  I thought there would be industrial ruins.  I found it vividly beautiful.

Interesting artist facts:  Smithson was born in Passaic, NJ.  His baby doctor was the poet William Carlos Williams.

 (Additional photos: Smithson was inspired by Eyes in the Heat, 1946, by Jackson Pollock/www.guggenheim.org; Stone Age tomb, New Grange, Ireland/www.en.wikipedia.org; The Lost World book jacket by Arthur Conan Doyle/ www.en.wikipedia.org)

Site Report No. 10: Sun Tunnels, UT

Stopover: Wendover, Utah, a large and mostly unused former World War II airfield.  It was the home of the training program for the first atomic bombing missions.  The B-29 Enola Gay took off here en route for Hiroshima.

Later, we drive the Millennium Falcon (John’s nickname for our truck) onto the Bonneville Salt Flats--30,000 acres of ancient salt beds. This prehistoric sea is also a raceway where hundreds of land speed records have been set and broken.  (Ok, so we weren’t going 600 mph, we still drove on Bonneville).  Stepping onto the hard, tightly packed salt it crunches like snow. I reach down to scoop some in my hand it falls away like wet clumps of common table salt.  It is one of the flattest places on Earth, where its curvature can be perceived.  The immense field of stark whiteness combined with the intense blue sky made it penetratingly bright. 

46 miles off Route 80 through the desert mountain range to the Ghost town of Lucin, Utah.  A placard tells us that the Lucin ponds were developed in the 1800’s for railroad steam engines.  It is now called an “oasis in the desert” for wildlife.  I don’t see any signs of water.  Miles more of dusty road.  Then small dots on the horizon of the Great Basin Desert.  What are those?  As we get closer, the scale shifts and we see monumental concrete tubes.  It’s Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973-76).  Four concrete tubes sit in two lines to form an open X shape and are aligned along the axis of the sun during the summer and winter solstices.  In these tubes are drilled holes of different sizes and correspond to representations of constellations: Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricornus.  The sun shines through the holes to create a pattern of circles and ellipses on the sides and bottom of the tubes.  The pattern is what she called “an inversion of the sky.”  Around the base of the tubes, birds have nested in the shadow spaces.  Walking inside the tubes, I can see the projected shapes caused by the midday sun.  The temperature inside the concrete is much cooler than the outside.  Through each tunnel, the landscape is framed, brought into focus.  There is the open desert range and the Grouse Creek Mountains in the distance.  We spend hours here without seeing any other people.  Fighter jets from a nearby airfield fly overhead.   

Site Report No. 9: Double Negative, NV

Driving these lands with sky can be hypnotic.  We drove through the magnificence of Lake Mead and the Valley of Fire at sunset to sleep in Overton, Nevada.  The next morning we make our way to the tiny Overton airport and past its main gate to yes, another dirt road, that climbs up Mormon Mesa.  We drive over one too many cattle guards and descend down what can only be described as a death-defying road.  Oops.  Crashed cars are embedded into the side of the cliffs.  Done by design or by accident?  I’m not sure.  We turn around to get back to the top of the desert mesa.  When we reach the top, the road along the rim is equally as perilous.  One might easily lose sight of the edge of the different paths during this time of day.  Forget about dusk or at night.  Then we see an open gash below the mesa top.  It is Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969-1970).  Blasted directly out of the mesa, there are two rectangular trenches separated by a canyon but lined up with one another.  They overlook an expansive river valley.  It is considered an icon of American Earth Art: using the earth’s surface as sculptural material. At the time of its creation, Heizer wanted no conservation measures.  He meant to make the erosion visible as a trip through time.  (Although I read recently that he might want the work recovered).

Looking down into the abyss is dizzying.  I see what were once clean cuts and straight edged walls crumbled.  Heaps of soft sandstone rocks collect on the floor.  The entire ground I stand on consists of the same substance.  It is simply a terrifying sensation.  But I have to experience the sculpture inside the trench. It is with a mix of adventure, fear, and awe that I pick a path and descend into the narrow lane.  Across the ravine, I see the trench on the other side.  Chasing away lizards, I climb over architectural ruins of stone.  I stand in the shape.  The walls, though eroded and no longer crisp planes, feel enormous and subtly enclosing.  I experience the scale of my own smallness in the midst of this massive sculpture.  It is vast and silent.

(Additional photos: Kindred spirits (1849), Asher Durand/en.wikipedia.org; Riverbank, attributed to Dong Yuan (Chinese, active 930s-60s)/www.metmuseum.org)

Site Report No. 8: The Lightning Field, NM

Plains of small ponderosa and piñon pine trees.  A lava landscape in slow pours that look as if they happened a short time ago.  We are in West Central New Mexico in a town called Quemado.  At the Largo Café we enjoy enchiladas (green chili always for me) and sopapillas.  The waitress tells us to be careful driving at night because of the elks.  Says she hit one recently that was as large as the one mounted on the wall of the café (see photo above). Largo is a classic on the road American experience: a watering spot for passing travelers, truckers, and locals to share stories (especially over a big breakfast of eggs and pancakes).

On the main street of town in a white building we are instructed to meet Robert, a rancher who will drive us to The Lightning Field (1977).  Walter De Maria wanted visitors to fully experience the great space so we must spend 24 hours in a cabin (no more than 6 people are on the property).  He also thought that isolation was the essence of Land Art.  So off we go about an hour from that street deep into desolate country.  Along the way, Robert picks up his mail from a lone mailbox, plainly stating, “Bills find you no matter where you are.”  Miles later, stepping onto the ground at the cabin, it does not look promising.  The earth is dry and cracked.  It is tough to go looking for lightning during a drought.  In fact, it is remarkable how little lightning does strike here in a typical year.  But the cabin is comfortable and filled with Arts and Crafts furniture.  I think I could live here.  From horizon to horizon there are mountains, sky, and the lightning rods in the field.  400 stainless steel rods embedded in a concrete foundation, spaced 220 feet apart in a rectangular grid formation in an area 1 mile x 1 kilometer.  They are of various lengths yet accurately measured so all the pointed upper tips lie at the same level on uneven ground.  The book in the cabin on the specifics of the project, states that if a gigantic piece of glass were placed on top of the rods it would be perfectly balanced.   As I walk through the immense field there are enormous anthills, jackrabbits, horny toad lizards, and an assortment of beetles.  I watched the light’s effect on the poles.  They seem to get slimmer, almost invisible by midday, slowly disappearing into the landscape.  At sunset, they become distinct, edges are sharpened in the violet, blue, magenta sky as they slowly fade again.  The rods catch the sun’s first radiant rays at sunrise.  At night, the show is high above.  The Milky Way stretches across the dark.  There are countless shooting stars and passing satellites.  The wind blows fast from the field.

I read De Maria is notorious for avoiding talking about his work.  He believes that talking about art or explaining it is foolish.  Living in The Lightning Field for a day and night was a captivating, sublime experience.  The longer I stayed the more it beckoned.  I was a little sad when Robert came to pick us up the following day.  But just as we were leaving, a solitary pronghorn antelope slowly walked through the field.