Designer of the Month: Michael Heizer

Week 4: City

City (1972- ) is truly an unusual, visionary work, even for an artist like Michael Heizer. When it's complete, it will have the distinction as the largest sculpture in the United States. Even in its current, ongoing state, the work is so large - roughly eighty feet high, a quarter of a mile wide, and one and a quarter miles long - that when the energy department did a survey flyover of the area, they mistook it for a military project.[1]

Michael Heizer, 45º, 90º, 180º/City, 1980-1999. Garden Valley, Nevada. Photograph by Simon Norfolk/NB Pictures, for The New York Times.

Unlike Effigy Tumuli (1983-85), City is a project that was conceived entirely by Heizer himself. He began searching for land in the West where he could begin work in 1971, finally settling on an initial three-square-mile plot of land in the Nevada desert.[2] As Michael Kimmelman describes of the work in a 2005 article in The New York Times:

In 1972, Heizer acquired land in Garden Valley and began work on the first part of ''City,'' his own version of Easter Island or Angkor Wat: a modernist complex of abstract shapes -- mounds, prismoids, ramps, pits -- to be spread across the valley. It was to be experienced over time, in shifting weather, not from a single vantage point or from above but as an accumulation of impressions and views gathered by slowly walking through it. Artists in the 1960's and 70's -- Donald Judd, Andre, De Maria, Smithson, others -- were pushing sculpture off its pedestal. This was sculpture pushed all the way into the Western desert, the sort of work that you couldn't buy or sell even though it was very expensive to produce. Its materials were dirt and rock and cement and rebar, not marble or porcelain or bronze, and its tools were not chisels but heavy machinery.[3] 

It's a grand vision, and one that Heizer has said may take his lifetime to complete.[4] Heizer's vision for City is for a series of complexes within the desert. Complex One - a sloped, flat-topped mound with projecting beams - was completed in 1974, but since then, his work has reached somewhat of an impasse.[5] Complex Two and Three relate to One by forming a horseshoe - like a stadium open at one end - around a broad pit or plaza, but with continual logistical and equipment issues, they represent the greater problem of what happens over time with such a remarkably massive undertaking.[6] ''A lot of money over the years went into simply trying to maintain old, useless equipment,'' Heizer has explained; ''I never stopped working on the pit and the Complexes, whenever I could afford to. But we're talking crazy optimism here.''[7]

Michael Heizer at the City site, next to 45°, 90°, 180°/Geometric Extraction . Courtesy of the Public Art Foundation of Greater Des Moines.

After 27 years of work and a major setback in the form of a debilitating neurological disease, Complex Two and Three were finally completed in 1999.[8] In addition to the first three complexes, the concrete sculpture 45°, 90°, 180°/Geometric Extraction (1999), his most massive single positive sculptural shape to date, was added to the space during this time and is a focal point within the larger City landscape.[9] As Michael Kimmelman describes of the effect of the four works:

Complexes One, Two and Three, which are collectively nearly the size of Yankee Stadium, look tiny and precious. The new phases are more pneumatic -- raked dirt formations resembling hills, valleys and mountains. There is a patch of unspoiled sage, like a park, smack in the middle, for flood runoff through the valley (Heizer was thrilled to discover that it actually worked during the recent January storms); and there's now a concrete sculpture, ''45o, 90o, 180o,'' which both evokes ancient Egypt and resembles a board game on the scale of an airport hangar. ''I call it a defracted gestalt,'' Heizer said while slowly steering the truck to the steep precipice of what he calls Alpha mound. ''From the ground you grasp the size but can't make out the shapes -- the opposite of what you sense from the air -- and your perception changes as you move around.''[10]

And then, of course, there's the issue of money. Although the Dia Art Foundation and the Lannan Foundation are current supporters of the project, as a non-commissioned, private artistic undertaking, raising funds for the project has always been an issue for Heizer.[11] And until the project is complete, City remains, and will continue to remain, a very private work. Heizer eventually plans to open City to the public, but not until he completes the 15 miles of concrete curbs that delineate the mounds and shore up the dirt slopes, tasks he estimates could take another decade to complete.[12]


[1] Public Art Foundation of Greater Des Moines online, "Michael Heizer's 'City'," http://dsmpublicartfoundation.org/feature/michael-heizers-city/, (accessed September 25, 2012).

[2] Douglas C. McGill, "Introduction," from Michael Heizer: Effigy Tumuli, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), 19.

[3] Michael Kimmelma, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," from The New York Times, February 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?pagewanted=3, (accessed September 26, 2012).

[4] Douglas C. McGill, "Introduction," from Michael Heizer: Effigy Tumuli, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), 19.

[5]  Michael Kimmelma, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," from The New York Times, February 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?pagewanted=4, (accessed September 26, 2012).

[6] Ibid. 

[7] Ibid.

[8]  Michael Kimmelma, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," from The New York Times, February 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?pagewanted=5, (accessed September 26, 2012).

[9]  Michael Govan, "Exhibitions: Michael Heizer, Intoduction," Dia Art Foundation online, http://www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/introduction/83, (accessed September 26, 2012).

[10] Michael Kimmelma, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," from The New York Times, February 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?pagewanted=5, (accessed September 26, 2012).
 
[11] Michael Govan, "Exhibitions: Michael Heizer, Artist Biography," Dia Art Foundation online, http://www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/artistbio/83, (accessed September 26, 2012).

[12] Michael Kimmelma, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," from The New York Times, February 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?pagewanted=6, (accessed September 26, 2012).

bike like a new yorker

As both a New Yorker who loves her bike and has come to increasingly rely on it to get around town over the past few years, and as an appreciator of good graphic design, I absolutely love Mother New York's Bike Like a New Yorker ad campaign.

Created for BikeNYC in partnership with Transportation Alternatives, the campaign was created in order to stay ahead of the debate on the upcoming bike share program by drawing attention to cyclists in the city. And as you can see by the end product, it's a job very well accomplished. You can check out the rest of the designs on the Mother New York website, and learn more about biking in the city at BikeNYC.org.

21 Balançoires

An exercise of musical cooperation, 21 Balançoires (21 Swings) is a brilliant Montreal public art project by Canadian design collective Daily Tours Les Jours.

Exploring the topic of cooperation, which states that we can achieve greater things together than alone, they created a giant collective instrument made out of 21 musical swings. While each set of colored swing was pre-recorded with notes from a different instrument, with people able create music by swinging, when working cooperatively, the swings could produce much more complex melodies than when each person swung alone. As the designers explain:

Each swing in motion triggers different notes, all the swings together compose a piece, but some sounds only emerge from cooperation. The project stimulates ownership of the new space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre. 

And if you're curious about what this looks, and sounds like in action, check out the video below!



21 Balançoires (21 Swings) from Daily Tous Les Jours on Vimeo.

(Via Colossal)

if I had a million dollars

I would buy...{the fashion edition: t-shirts in shades of blue}

A blue/white little mountains t-shirt, by Things Like Diamonds.

Creatures of Comfort's Dyed Julie Tee, available at Of a Kind.

A Gradient Top from Need Supply Co.

Rachel Rose's Cara Black Silk Tee.

And this grey cellular tee, from raeburn ink.

Aron Wiesenfeld

Girl With Bike, 2003. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches.

The Fish Gatherer, 2006. Charcoal on paper, 50 x 38 inches.

Winter Cabin, 2011. Oil on canvas, 30 x 41 inches.

Landfall, 2009. Charcoal and sanguine on paper, 50 x 38 inches.

Birthday, 2009. Oil on canvas, 44 x 46 inches.

Tremendously beautiful and hauntingly mysterious paintings and drawings by artist Aron Wiesenfeld.  These feel like you could easily get lost in each of the worlds that his subjects inhabit.


(Via The Fox Is Black)

Designer of the Month: Michael Heizer

Week 3: Effigy Tumuli

As we saw last week with North, East, South, West (1967/2002) and Double Negative (1969), Michael Heizer's work tends towards the sense of what I would like to call monumental minimalism. With his focus on creating large-scale, abstract negative spaces within specific landscapes, even when these works are at least somewhat recognizable as a geometric form, Heizer's work can sometimes be difficult to relate to. Which is one reason why Effigy Tumuli (1983-85) is such an interesting departure for Heizer.

Michael Heizer, Effigy Tumuli Water Strider, 1983-85. Buffalo Rock State Park, Ottawa, IL. Courtesy of California Home + Design.

A 224-acre landscape in Buffalo Rock State Park, Illinois, covered with five enormous earth mounds shaped like river animals, Effigy Tumuli is, at least to date, Heizer's one and only representational work. Of course, a work on this scale is only representational from a limited view point. From the air, they're immediately recognizable as animals. On the ground, however, rather than representative figures, the land more closely resembles a choppy landscape of furrows and hills, grown over with a carpet of colored rye, with the really big mounds so large as to suggest actual, natural hills.[1] So why would a purely abstract artist like Heizer suddenly wake up one day and decide to create a work of this nature? Why, he was commissioned, of course. In some ways, Effigy Tumuli was inspired by Heizer's childhood and trips with his father, the anthropologist Robert Heizer, on expeditions in Mexico, Central America and the deserts of the American West, where he became intimately familiar with the prehistoric art and architecture of America.[2] When he began working on Effigy Tumuli, Heizer was certainly aware that prehistoric Native Americans had built earth mounds, called tumuli, many of which still existed in the present day, but he was surprised to discover just how widespread the practice had been; literary thousands of these mounds cover the continent.[3] Of the source material and representational aspect of the project, Heizer explains:

It's an untapped source of information and thematic material. It's a beautiful tradition, and it's fully neglected. And it's from a group of people who were genocided. So, in a lot of ways, the Effigy Tumuli is a political and social comment. To me it is...The criterion was earth-moved sculpture, period. All domestic material. Nothing imported. No gravel, no wood, no concrete, no metal. Just dirt."[4]

Michael Heizer, Effigy Tumuli Catfish, 1983-85. Buffalo Rock State Park, Ottawa, IL. Courtesy of Live Auctioneers.

But even from the start of the project, Heizer had trouble with the very representational nature of Effigy Tumuli. In the years leading up to his actual work on the site, after agreeing to the commission and firming up a contract, Heizer became intimately familiar with the Buffalo Rock site. In the summer of 1983, he walked over the entire site, memorizing the terrain and taking thousands of photographs, which he would eventually enlarge and mount in his studio as dozens of photographic collages - some ranging in size up to six feet long and three feet high - that he used throughout the project for both reference and information.[5] Heizer was inspired to create his own versions of prehistoric effigy and ceremonial mounds both from his experience with them as a child and from his research and reading into the history of the mounds in the Midwest, particularly Illinois.[6] He explains:

It's in the nature of my work that I keep in mind the environment I'm taken into. And the native American tradition of mound building absolutely pervades the whole place, mystically and historically and in very sense. Those mounds are part of a global, human dialogue of art, and I thought it would be worthwhile to reactivate that dialogue. I thought, this won't be some Disneyland-looking kind of a park. It will be reminiscent of that native American history. And people out there seem proud to of having these mounds. They get people excited. So, it's good material for a public work...The obligation was to maintain that ancient dialogue, and so I couldn't just come in with some modernist sculptural geometry.[7]

But it was exactly this struggle - a need to create representational images to remain true to the project's vision crossed with an entire career thus far spent exploring abstraction - that led Heizer to the ultimate decision of river animals as the proper subjects for his mounds.[8] After realizing that the Native Americans had never created insect-shaped mounds, Heizer's initial design called upon these forms as his own innovative spin on the mound-building tradition; the ultimate forms of the mounds as river animals, however, came when Heizer grew increasingly disenchanted with the idea, and instead decided to draw on the typography of the area and the Illinois River as a source of inspiration.[9] Of course, while they're recognizable as representational animals, the final forms themselves - a snake, catfish, turtle, frog, and a water strider - are inherently geometric in nature, thus maintaining Heizer's connection to abstraction.[10]



[1] Douglas C. McGill, "Introduction," from Michael Heizer: Effigy Tumuli, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990), 14.

[2] Ibid., 10.

[3] Ibid., 11.

[4] Ibid., 11.

[5] Ibid., 21-22.

[6] Ibid., 22.

[7] Ibid., 22-23.

[8] Ibid., 25.

[9] Ibid., 25

[10] Ibid., 34.

eden house

There is just so much to love about this modern addition to a classic bungalow. Those windows are an obvious choice - both the large cantilevered bay and the series of smaller, variously placed ones on the opposite side - but then there's also that amazing wall of shelves and that loft-like space, not to mention the gorgeous wood-paneled exterior. Really, I could go on and on, but the truth of the matter is that The Practice of Everyday Design took a beautiful old home and made it even better. Not an easy task by any means. 


(Photographs by Chris Shepherd. Via Design Milk)

bird-apartment

The bird-apartment, by Japanese design firm Nendo, is certainly not your average birdhouse. Located in the Ando Momofuku Center, a facility devoted to promoting and increasing access to nature activities, it has enough nest space for 78 very stylish birds. But not only that, the bird-apartment is also a tree house, with enough room for one person to peer inside the nests through a series of peep-holes.

Don't you want to visit? I can only image what the birds think of all this.


(Photographs by Masaya Yoshimura / Daici Ano. Via Spoon & Tamago)

if I had a million dollars

I would buy...{the looking forward to fall clothing edition: socks and tights}

Writing's on the Wallpaper Tights, from ModCloth.

Happy Socks' Faded Diamond Knee Highs.

Triple Rib Tights, from HUE.

Lisa b's Fair Isle Knee Socks, available at Madewell.

And Opaque Ombre Tights from Hansel from Basel, available at Anthropologie.

Kristine Five Melvær - bloom

Don't you just love the way that a good lamp can completely change the feel of a room? I can image any one Norwegian designer Kristine Five Melvær's Bloom lamps, or even all three, as the perfect accent to a kid's bedroom, an office, or even a living room.

Unfortunately, these don't seem to have been commercially produced, but I think that their welded steel and printed canvas construction are an absolutely lovely concept.

Bloom is a series of three table lamps inspired by forms from the nature. Like big drops, the shades may be associated with buds, fruits or water, while the seams in the construction are reminiscent of fibers. The steel structures have different heights, which contribute to the association of organic bodies.

Check out more of Melvær's beautiful product design work on her website.


(Via sfgirlbybay)

Designer of the Month: Michael Heizer

Week 2: North, East, South, West and Double Negative

My first exposure to Michael Heizer's artwork was through Dia:Beacon, home to North, East, South, West (1967/2002), one of his earliest Earthworks, and Heizer's first deliberate use of negative space within the Earth itself.[1] To create the work, Heizer used wood and sheet metal to form four sculptural "elements" of various sizes and shapes, placing two of them, North and South, in the ground in California, in the Sierra Nevada.[2] In 2002, Dia:Beacon had the work constructed out of weathering steel, in its entirety, as a permanent feature of the museum. "These four diverse sculptural elements," Michael Govan explains, "— two stacked cubic forms, one larger and one smaller (North); a cone (South); a triangular trough (West); and an inverted truncated cone (East)—together measure more than 125 feet in length, and sink from the floor of the gallery to a depth of 20 feet."[3]

Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West, 1967/2002. Dia Art Foundation, gift of Lannan Foundation. Photograph by Tom Vinetz. Courtesy of Dia:Beacon. 

If you've ever been to Dia:Beacon, you'll certainly remember this work. Although the museum doesn't let you get close enough to see into any of the forms other than North, they're a dominating void in a magnificent space. For those of you who haven't had an opportunity to visit the museum, if you're ever in the New York City area, I would highly recommend a visit. The town of Beacon is located about an hour and a half North of the city and is very close to the train station, making it a great day trip even for people without cars. Housed in a former Nabisco printing factory, the museum is lit almost entirely by natural light through the many large windows and skylights throughout, and as such, it's hours of operation change dramatically based on the seasons. It's simply one of the most impressive spaces and collections of contemporary art that I've ever come across, and it makes sense that Heizer's work is an important part of its permanent collection. It may be difficult to grasp the significance of a work such as North, East, South, West, but when it was first developed, there was really no precedence to its dimensions.[4] Of course, Heizer was just getting started. As Govan explains of the work:

Heizer prefers the term size to scale in descriptions of his work, in part to emphasize the factual and visual implications of the actual distance traversed by the eye or on foot in viewing it. The sheer physical dimensions of North, East, South, West, and its physical integration into, or displacement of, the fabric of the Dia building, force an entirely different viewing experience from that of traditional sculpture in the round, an experience that is a function less of movement to allow multiple viewpoints than of the extended journey in time and space required to comprehend it. And the fact that the sculpture literally displaces the floor on which the visitor walks creates a sense of potential physical danger that further challenges the viewing experience.[5]  

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969. 240,000-ton displacement of rhyolite and sandstone, 1500 x 50 x 30 ft. Located in Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Gift of Virginia Dwan. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

While North, East, South, West represents Heizer's first use of negative space within the landscape, Double Negative (1969) is his first true Earthwork, and despite its remote physical location, (it's part of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles' permanent collection, but the work itself is located in the Nevada desert) is one of the single most influential works within the cannon of contemporary art.[6] Seem unlikely? Maybe, but stick with me here, because it may not look like much is going on, but there's actually quite a bit at stake. As MOCA Director Richard Koshaleck and Curator Kerry Brougher describe the work:

Monumental in scale and imposing in presence, the approximately 1,500-foot-long Double Negative is, as its title suggests, an absence, a removal. Two long, straight trenches, 30 feet wide and 50 feet deep and displacing 240,000 tons of desert sandstone, art cut into the 'tabletop' of the Mormon Mesa, located approximately 80 miles from Las Vegas and 5 miles from the small town of Overton, Nevada. The cuts face each other across an indentation in the plateau's scalloped perimeter, forming a continuous image, a thick linear volume that bridges and includes the 'negative' space between them.[7]

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969. Courtesy of double negative.

Double Negative is, admittedly, a difficult work to either understand or love. Blurring the lines between sculpture, architecture and landscape, its the embodiment of absence on a monumental scale; not only does it take its surroundings into account, but it is, quite literally, a part of them.[8] And then, of course, is that fact that it's located in the middle of the Nevada desert. The concept that a work of art must be housed and displayed within the confines of a gallery or museum was an idea that artists like Heizer were attempting to break away from with such works, and Double Negative's massive scale, distant location and immobility are all vital components of this experimenting and redefining process.[9]


[1] Michael Govan, "Exhibitions: Michael Heizer, Introduction," Dia Art Foundation online, http://www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/introduction/83, (accessed September 12, 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Richard Koshaleck and Kerry Brougher, "Foreward," from Michael Heizer: Double Negative, Sculpture in the Land, (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991), 10.

[7] Ibid., 10.

[8] Ibid., 10.

[9] Ibid., 10.

willow - sweater

Willow - Sweater from Filip Sterckx on Vimeo.

This music video for "Sweater," by the Belgium band Willow, is pretty incredible. Shot using three projectors to beam images onto two walls and the floor, there's no attempt to hind the mechanism for how the whole thing works, but I think that just ends up adding to the coolness factor. Enjoy!

(Via BOOOOOOOM)

butter + love + american made

I don't normally do posts like this, but looking at these images, you can see why I couldn't resit. Alison, my fabulous friend and the baking genius behind Butter + Love, is in the running to win the Audience Choice Award as part of Martha Stewart's American Made contest. And to celebrate, and as a creative way to get people excited, Alison came up with the brilliant idea of recreating iconic American images with a special Butter + Love spin. The results, like Alison's cookies, are nothing short of brilliant.

You can read more about the design and photo shoot process on the Butter + Love blog, and cast your own vote for Butter + Love every day from now until voting ends on September 24th! Best of luck, Alison!