Site-Specific

I have been thinking a lot about site-specific art today. It is a visual art form in which I used to work extensively, in fact it is the form of work in which I have the longest experience and in which I am most comfortable. When I say site-specific art, most people of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, perhaps, Claes Oldenburg’s baseball bat in Chicago, or almost anything Andy Goldsworthy. The types of work that I used to perpetrate were more Andy Goldsworthy-like, taking the materials at hand in a natural setting and manipulate them creatively. I tended to use the natural materials in a different way, however. My work was aimed at using natural materials at hand in a specific site to rework the site itself to look like a site of archaeological significance- particularly ancient ritual space or battle fields. It was more about art making that doesn’t focuses on the object or product, but rather the process, but unlike many artists who work on site-specific projects who engage with social and political issues, I am much more interested in my, and through me human, relationship with a specific physical place. I never took a commission to do this work and aside from a series of photos Laura took of my roadside stone sculptures in Colorado I never documented them. That wasn’t the point; it was simply to do them, to immerse myself in the work, in the time, and in the space. There is purity to it that I love. It is the axis mundi of all my other work and I need to make a pilgrimage again soon.

Eric in a Word: engastrimyth
Book of the Day: All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
Song of the Day: Night of the Assassins - Les Rallizes Denudes
Sketch Medium: graphite and turkish coffee on paper