SCULPTURE all around

26 November 2007john boehme

SCULPTURE ALL AROUND Earth art and earthworks – Earth art (also called “land art”) refers to a movement of artists with wide ranging goals, but all created in nature, employing such materials as stones, dirt, and leaves. “Earthworks” is the same movement. Most works are sculptural. Earthworks often refer to phenomena such as the slow process of erosion or to the movement of planets or stars, especially the sun. Many earthworks are intended to help us to better understand nature. Some demonstrate the inherent differences between nature and civilization, often pointing out artists’ desires to understand, conquer, and control natural processes.During the late 1960s and early 1970s art began to move outdoors from galleries. Some earthworks have been small enough to be gallery pieces, but many involve huge land masses, as did Michael Heizer’s Nine Nevada Depressions, 1968: big, curved and zigzagging trenches, like abstract doodles on the earth, placed intermittently over a span of 520 miles. Another example is the 1970 piece by Robert Smithson (American, 1938-1973) titled Spiral Jetty, which extended 1500 feet into the Great Salt Lake, though today it can be witnessed only through documentation.

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