Art Gallery Area 49

Art History Online -  Final Exam

Gallery Area 49

About Us
Area 49 is located in Calimesa, California and is curated by Britt Hohner-Worthington. It is our vision to showcase unconventional art forms, making less familiar concepts of art available to a broader audience.

The "Earth Matters" Exhibition

"Environmental art" is a rather broad term that encompasses a variety of artistic expressions. The concept of environmental art emerged as a movement pioneered by a group of artists in the 1960, some of them featured in this exhibition.

This new approach to art first emerged in form of land-art or "site-specific" art which involves the sculpting of the landscape, sometimes on a monumental scale. The surface of the Earth becomes a three-dimensional canvas which the artist re-shapes and re-creates.

A different form of site-specific art is created by leaving the natural environment intact. Many environmental artists active in nature conservation work only with "indigenous" materials found on-site; the artwork is created as part of the natural environment which is left unharmed, expressing a desire for a closer and more harmonious relationship with what we call nature.

Yet another expression of environmental art is closely related to environmental activism and conservationism. Here, environmental art becomes "action art"; the objective is to bring attention to environmental or social causes, generate interest and awareness and to provoke public response.

The various concepts and aspects of this intriguing form of art are represented in this exhibition by a group of renowned artists who have worked and exhibited extensively in the field of environmental art. 

"Earth Matters" features the following artists:

Jackie Brookner
Agnes Denes
Andy Goldsworthy
Nancy Holt
Chris Jordan
Richard Long
Michael Heizer
Alan Sonfist
Jason deCaires Taylor
James Turrell

"Prima Lingua" by Jackie Brookner

Media: Concrete, volcanic rock, mosses, ferns, wetland plants, fish, steel

Dimensions: 64 by 101 by 80 in.

Date: 1996-2002

Born in 1945 in Providence, Rhode Island, Jackie Brookner was pursuing a PhD in Art History, but turned to a career in art, particularly sculpture, in 1971. Early on in her career as an artist she became fascinated with the relationship between moving water and biological processes and was increasingly driven to combine art with environmental awareness. As an environmental artist, Brookner specializes in turning waste water reclamation into public works of art and in raising awareness of the condition of public water systems.

She has created landscape-scale artwork involving urban biospheres; however, Brookner is best known for her living artwork that is both biological and functional in nature. Her unique "biosculpture" "Prima Lingua" is a biological microcosm and water filtration system in form of a giant tongue, designed to showcase natural water regeneration processes. "It's almost like a totem to have that kind of power to stimulate the human forces, the human will, to want to pay attention to our connection to water," she says. "The fact that we are water -- we're 75 percent to 80 percent water, depending on how old you are -- every living thing is water, so water is the thing that really links us all."

Artist's website:
http://www.jackiebrookner.com/

"Wheatfield: A Confrontation" by Agnes Denes

Media: Wheat

Dimensions: Two acres

Date:1982

Agnes Denes was born in Hungary in 1931, moved to Sweden and eventually came to the United States. Denes pioneered a unique interdisciplinary approach to the concept of art, exploring interactions of physical and social sciences with different artforms. She has shown her art in more than 450 exhibitions worldwide and has won a number of awards from institutions such as the Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. She holds several honorary doctorates. Considered one of the founders of the environmental art movement, she is best known for her monumental and often controversial land-art projects.

For her work :Wheatfield: A Confrontation", Denes harvested 1000 pounds of wheat from a field she had planted on two acres of land fill near downtown Manhattan, and planted seeds from the harvest in different regions around the world. Denes commented on her artwork: "Food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological issues".

Artist's website
http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/index.html

"Balancing Rock Misty" by Andy Goldsworthy

Media: cibachrome photograph

Dimensions: 10 by 15.5 in.

Date: June 1979

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Chesire, UK, in 1956. He attended Bradford Art College (1974-1975) and received his Bachelor of Arts from Preston Polytechnic (1975-1978). He has won awards from the Scottish Art Council and received a honorary degree from the University of Bradford. A documentary about Goldsworthy's life and career ("Rivers and Tides") was filmed in 2001.

Goldsworthy creates his projects on-site and integrates his artwork into the structure of the site. Changes and decay caused by natural processes are part of the artwork. Also part of the creative process is the documentation of the project by means of photography. His philosophies are expressed in his work "Balancing Rock Misty", created in Langdale, Cumbria, UK, in 1979. " Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit."

Artist's website:
http://www.ucblueash.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/TEST/index.html

"Sun Tunnels" by Nancy Holt

Media: Concrete

Dimensions: 26 m long

Date:  1973-1976

Nancy Holt was born in 1938 in Worcester, Massachussetts and graduated from Tufts University in Medford. Holt started her artistic career as a photographer, but is most noted for her monumental land-art and environmental projects. She married environmental artist Robert Smithon in 1963. Holt's fascination with land-art came from a desire to change how art is viewed and perceived. Due to its scale, a visitor does not just view land-art, but is surrounded by it and becomes part of it. In her projects, she focuses on the perception of surroundings in relationship to the passage of time. She tries to tie into this construct a "connection between the Earth and its place in the solar system and the universe".

These concepts are present in her "Sun Tunnels" in the Great Basin Desert in Utah. Each tunnel is aligned differently in respect to time of day, as well as summer/winter solstices, creating different interactions between the artwork and the natural light. According to Holt, "it’s an inversion of the sky/ground relationship-bringing the sky down to the Earth."

Nancy Holt at the Graham Foundation
"http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/3611-nancy-holt-sightlines

"Plastic Bottles" by Chris Jordan

Media: photographic inkjet print

Dimensions: 60 by 120 in.

Date: 2007

Chris Jordan was born (1963) and raised in Connecticut. He graduated from law school and practiced corporate law for ten years, but eventually left the legal profession in order to pursue his passion and embark on a career as a photographer and visual artist.

His photo collage "plastic bottles" from 2007 shows a mass of two million plastic bottles, which is the amount of bottles discarded every 5 minutes in the United States. Jordan sees his artwork as a comment on the culture of mindless consumption and destruction of resources prevalent in modern society. In his own words: "As an American consumer myself, I'm in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry."

Artist's website:
www.chrisjordan.com

"Cornish Slate Ellipse" by Richard Long

Media: Delabole slate

Dimensions: 720 x 342 cm

Date: 2009

 

Richard Long was born in Bristol, UK, and attended the University of the West of England's College of Art as well as St. Martin's School of Art and Design in the 1960s. Early in his career he became involved in the emerging concepts of earthworks and land-art. Long prefers to work with natural materials such as leaves, stones and mud outdoors or in the studio. 

In his work "Cornish Slate Ellipse" Long focuses on the use of natural media to create an artificial structure. His objective is to explore interactions of nature with man-made environments. "I like the fact that every stone is different, one from another, in the same way all fingerprints, or snowflakes (or places) are unique, so no two circles can be alike."

Artist's website:
http://www.richardlong.org/

"Levitated mass" by Michael Heizer

Media: Granite

Dimensions: 456 by 15 by 36.5 ft.

Date: June 2012

Michael Heizer was born in Berkely, California, in 1944, and studied at the San Fancisco Art Institute in 1963-64. During the 1960s, Heizer began to experiment with massive land-art projects involving the dying of large sections of desert and "negative sculpture" (digging out of the earth instead of building up). He developed a preference for working with massive rock formations that seem to defy gravity.

His sculpture "Levitated Mass" was opened to the public at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in June 2012. The "mass" consist of a 340-ton boulder which was transported with considerable difficulty and under heavy media coverage from a quarry in Riverside County to Los Angeles. It is suspended above a 456 ft long walkway. Michael Heizer has not commented on the meaning of the artwork. In an interview with the L.A. Times he said: "I think there is a draw from the rock itself, a magnetism we will see when the sculpture is completed, but will the artwork have the same interest value as moving the rock around did?"A documentary about the creation of "Levitated Mass" ("The Boulder") is in progress.

Michael Heizer
http://www.diaart.org/exhibitions/introduction/83

"Fall Leaves Westchester" by Alan Sonfist

Media: leaves and paper
Dimensions: 18 by 36 in.

Date: 1970

Born and raised in the South Bronx of NYC, Sonfist earned a Masters degree in Art from Hunter College, studied at Ohio State University and went on to focus on Visual Studies at MIT Cambridge, Massachusetts. He published critically acclaimed works involving environmental art, and has spoken and lectured extensively on the subject. Alan Sonfist has exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.

In his "Green Art" collage "Fall Leaves Westchester" Sonfist uses materials found in nature as well as a play on words. He transforms the generic organic materials into unique, expressive art. “He tells the stories of cultural and natural habitats. And awakens our responsibilities to the conservation of our environment” – C.S. Johnson, Horticulture Magazine.

Artist's wbsite:
http://www.alansonfist.com/

"Silent Evolution" by Jason deCaires Taylor

Media: pH neutral concrete reinforced with fiberglass submerged in up to 12m of water

Dimensions: 420 square meters

Date: November 2010
 

Jason deCaires Taylor was born in 1974 and spent much of his childhood in Europe and South East Asia. He earned a BA in sculpture from the London Institute of Art in 1998. He is also noted for his underwater photography. Taylor is active in the protection of marine environments and as an artist, focuses on the concept of change and growth in response to a given environment.

Both concepts are realized and combined in his enigmatic sculpture gardens off the coast of Grenada and Cancun. Submerged life-size human form sculptures are designed to become integrated into a depleted and endangered marine environment by growing into artificial coral reefs. "The Silent Evolution" consists of 403 life-size human figure sculptures. Taylor: “The coral applies the paint. The fish supply the atmosphere. The water provides the mood. People ask me when it's going to be finished. This is just the beginning”

Artist's website:
http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

"Roden Crater" by James Turrell

Media: volcanic rock

Dimensions: 3 miles (diameter)

Date: 1970 - present

James Turrell was born in 1943 in Pasadena, California. He worked as a professional pilot and aerial cartographer before receiving a BA in Perceptual Psychology from Pomona College. He eventually earned a MFA in Art from the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. In 1966, Turrell started working with the Los Angeles-based Light and Space Group, a community of artists experimenting with light. By 1970, James Turrell had started to explore the perception of light on a larger scale in form of land-art.

His best-known work (begun in 1970), "Roden Crater" is an ongoing project. This earthwork is designed to be a natural observatory. “I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” says the artist, “like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.”

Website for the Roden Crater:
www.rodencrater.com/

Conclusion

What I've learned mostly is that it takes a great deal of knowledge to conceptualize and organize art exhibitions on a professional level. Curators would have to be experts in art and maybe also in design in order to select appropriate artwork and to structure and display the exhibit in a meaningful way.

Locating potential candidates for an exhibition may be the easy part-- there is a confusing array of artists to consider, all of whom might be valuable additions to the program. Selecting relevant artwork that showcases the theme and supports the vision of the exhibition is probably the most difficult aspect of the process.

To me, it is the diversity of different experiences, philosophies and strategies that different artists bring to the common theme of the exhibit that is at the core of such a project. These "variations on a theme" generate interest and prompt out-of-the-box thinking which I think is a crucial aspect of art appreciation.

The position of a curator is challenging and requires commitment far beyond the confines of an 8-5pm job. It is obvious, that the job is never really finished, and a great deal of extra time and devotion.are necessary to "do it right".