Modern Desert Markings

The first time I heard the term Land Art was in college. My ecology instructor showed us images of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. We learned how creating the spiral altered the environment enough to cause the tiny microscopic organisms to change the color of the water surrounding it to red. 

Living in southern Nevada, I knew we had a few key Land Art pieces in the area. I had heard rumors about Heizer’s large Land Art piece called City. He spent decades creating it, but to date, only a select few had ever seen it. I have visited Heizer’s Double Negative and Ugo Rondinone's Seven Magic Mountains several times. In one sense, I am in awe of the scale and uniqueness of these Land Art pieces; on the other hand, it seems like the senseless destruction of a fragile desert environment. An environment that I deeply love.  

Fast forward to the pandemic of 2020, isolation indoors had started to take its toll on me. I needed time in nature and found solitude at the Jean Dry Lake Bed. This vast area is close to my home and provides easy access to open space with relatively few other individuals. During a Google search of the Jean Dry Lake, I learned that Michael Heizer’s Circular Surface Planar Displacement and Rift were created there. Around this time, a friend sent me the open call for the Modern Desert Markings at the Barrick Museum on the campus of UNLV. I applied and was selected to participate in the exhibit.

The images I created are from a series of attempts to ‘go large’ in the vein of Heizer’s Rift without the impact on the environment. The art pieces I created encompass a variety of materials, from spray-painted cardboard to aluminum insulation and landscape cloth. I increased the scale through trial and error, eventually making a 180-foot line. After taking photographs via a drone, I removed all materials.

The case for Land Art is complicated; is it art on the scale of Egyptian pyramids or the Nazca Lines? Or is it a degradation of the environment for the sake of art?

To learn more about Land Art from both viewpoints, check out the resources below:

• https://www.designboom.com/art/past-present-future-land-art-movement-natural-expanses-06-25-2021/ 

• https://filmlifestyle.com/what-is-land-art/ 

• https://ethicalunicorn.com/2021/12/21/what-is-land-art-why-its-important/

• https://mediaengagement.org/research/powerful-art-harmed-environments/

• https://uminnpressblog.com/2010/08/11/the-ethics-of-earth-art-different-approaches-to-understanding-ourselves-in-relation-to-the-planet/

• https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/land-art

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STW0eZDsKVg

• https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=stu_theses