10 February 2008

Highlighted Environmental Artist

For those subscribed to this feed, sorry if you got several unintelligent drafts of postings in the past day. I accidentally posted a draft - twice! I was able to delete it (both times), but I think it still shows up in the feed...

So here is a new feature where I would like to highlight an artist who has done work that relates to the environment.

Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty

Photo from Estate of Robert Smithson


NY Times article about Smithson's work:
"The most famous work of American art that almost nobody has ever seen in the flesh is Robert Smithson's ''Spiral Jetty'': 6,650 tons of black basalt and earth in the shape of a gigantic coil, 1,500 feet long, projecting into the remote shallows of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where the water is rosé red from algae."

The reason I post about Smithson now is there is a newly proposed oil drilling near the Spiral Jetty that is causing concern. It is worried that the drilling and extraction of oil will disrupt the natural environment of the lake with barges, equipment, and introducing toxins and chemicals into the wetlands. There is also concern about traffic and noise from the drilling and operations. The owner of the land sculpture, Dia Art Foundation, is calling on the State of Utah to consider the effects of what they are doing. They are also encouraging the public to write to the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordination Office (template letter here).

3 comments:

B.G. Christensen said...

I always feel a bit voyeuristic when deleted drafts accidentally show up in my reader. It's fun, though, to see how people put posts together.

Unrelated to your post but somewhat related to your blog, have you heard of ? I like the idea of initiatives like this that actually do something good with ad revenue, but I'm too attached to all the added frills of my personalized Google homepage and the convenience of my Google search bar to switch over.

B.G. Christensen said...

I hate it when Blogger does that. It worked just fine in the preview. At any rate, the end of that first sentence of the second paragraph should be "Friends Green," which is what the rest of the paragraph links to.

mhcs said...

Thank you GMA! It always kind of P's me O when people talk about how much we're screwing up the environment without any word on what we can do better. I love the Land Institute's work (www.landinstitute.org), but I can't stand their Prairie Writer's Circle because of that. Maybe they figger they've earned the right to whine unremittingly 'cause hey, at least they're doing something. : )

It's a lot like a fire-and-brimstone preacher who forgets the "Come to Jesus and you'll be saved" part at the end. Do any real preachers do that? Not many, 'cause if you do that then nobody comes to your Bible camp.