Annotated Image Collection for BFA Thesis Proposal

Jaime K. An-Wong
Annotated Image Collection for BFA Thesis Proposal

Walter De Maria, “The New York Earth Room,” 1977. Long-term installation at

141 Wooster Street, New York City. Photo: John Cliett. Copyright Dia Art Foundation.

Earth Room combines De Maria’s work as a minimalist, conceptualist and land artist

De Maria’s earth sculpture is especially interesting as an experience of the senses. On walking inside the apartment, the air has a different quality to it. It is humid, and the space smells reassuringly damp and earthy. The temperature of the space itself is very comfortable, regularized naturally by the soil and without the use of heaters. The earth stands in contrast to the combination of the white walls and naked lights. Only the glass stands between the artwork and the viewer and demonstrates the depth of the soil in the room.

Watered and raked once a week in order to keep it like it was during its first exhibition, the earth also has something barren about it: its richness and wetness contrast the fact that there is nothing growing out of it, no visible life.
















Robert Smithson, "Spiral Jetty," 1970

A monumental earthwork located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. At one point it was submerged because of the rising water level in the lake. Recently, the "Spiral Jetty" has re-surfaced, but it now has a crust of salt on its surface and at the edges.

Robert Smithson, “Asphalt Rundown,” 1969

Smithson’s first “flow”, situated in an abandoned and mundane section of a gravel and dirt quarry in Rome. A large dump truck released a load of asphalt down a gutted and gullied cliff already marked by time.

Aside from Smithson’s interest in working outside of the gallery walls, he also had a strong interest in Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist works. Jackson Pollock was known to lay his canvas on the floor, and he poured the pigment on the canvas to create many of his artworks. It has been noted by Robert Hobbs that Smithson takes the drip away from the canvas and in the outdoors he monumentalizes it in a slow ooze. There is some randomness in the process and how the finished work looks.

Leslie Shows, Display of Properties, 2009
Acrylic, paper, pins, and flags
28 x 43 ft.

Indoor sculpture in the spirit of Robert Smithson's Asphalt Rundown (1969), where asphalt was poured down a hillside from the tipped bed of a dump truck. Through the force of gravity, the asphalt's own mass determined its form based on the qualities of its sluggish materiality. Here, Leslie Shows uses paper to demonstrate the effects of gravity on the hanging strips of paper attached to the flags.






















Mary Mattingly, The New Mobility of Home, 2004

With this photograph, the future on earth is a forgone conclusion. This is one scenario of the impending apocalypse. Mattingly presents us with the "navigator" who is busy creating and utilizing adaptive technology to survive. The subject is wearing a "wearable home."

Waterpod Project, 2009

Waterpod™ is a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides. This was the brain-child of the photographer Mary Mattlingly. Another scenario of the apocalypse, is the rising sea levels due to climate change and the result of global warming. Many of the major cities of the world are located on the coast.

As a sustainable, navigable living space, the Waterpod™ showcases the critical importance of the environment and art, serving as a model for new living, do-it-yourself technologies, art, and dialogue.

The Waterpod demonstrates future pathways for nomadic, mobile shelters and water-based communities, docked and roaming. It embodies self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, learning and curiosity, human expression and creative exploration. It intends to prepare, inform, and provide an alternative to current and future living spaces.

In preparation for our coming world with an increase in population, a decrease in usable land, and a greater flux in environmental conditions, people will need to rely closely on immediate communities and look for alternative living models; the Waterpod is about cooperation, collaboration, augmentation, and metamorphosis.

Three Antennas at the Waterpod Project

The sculpture of the three antennas was first presented at the Venice Biennale. they are working antennas used to receive and transmit wireless communications, such as broadcasts, e-mails, and downloads of music and videos. The scuplture was installed on the Waterpod Project barge to be used. The Waterpod Project is a work in progress, with five artists to live on board for up to one year. They are to be self-sufficient; to be able to grow their own food, generate their own electricity, and to filter the water to make it potable.
















Photo by Jannes Linders, Aperture Gallery

This photo was from the Aperture Gallery. The exhibit was, "Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art." The Netherlands for many centuries have dealt with the rising sea levels to varying degrees. Of course, technology has brought new abilities to control flooding and has enabled the Dutch to claim land from the sea. If climate change brings about rising sea levels, then we can appropriate similar techniques to save our cities near the coast.

















Photo by Hans Aarsman, Aperture Gallery

Besides the activity on land, much of the human activity in the Netherlands take place on barges and ships.





















Steven Siegel, Scale, 2002
Photo taken March 3, 2004

The sculptor, Steven Siegel, has used many types of recycled materials for his sculptures. It is interesting to me, how Siegel used newspapers in his outdoor sculptures. The sculptures are expected to last a finite amount of time. In this case, "Scale" was to remain erect about 15 years.

















Steven Siegel, Scale, 2002
Photo taken October 2006

Here, only four years since "Scale" was erected, it started to collapse.
















Steven Siegel, Scale, 2002
Photo taken April 9, 2009

Finally, it has collapsed seven years after the scuplture was erected. The early demise of the sculptue was partially due to design and partially due to severe weather conditions.










Steven Siegel, New Geology #2, 1990

Although this newspaper structure was erected years earlier, it is still standing. According to Steven Siegel, if you look carefully at the newspaper, the newsprint is still readable. The slower decay of the sculpture is primarily due to the overgrowth of the structure by vegetation.

Arshile Gorky, One Year the Milkweed, 1944

Arshile Gorky lead a tragic but artistic life. Arshile Gorky, A Retrospective, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art made that very point. He came to the United States to escape the genocide of Armenians, only to lose his mother in the process due to starvation. His artistic skills were sharpened by studying the masterpieces of Cezanne, Picasso, Miro, and Roberto Matta. It was only thru Gorky’s reconnection with nature (his studio in rural Connecticut and Crooked Run Farm in Virginia) did he re-live and paint with emotion what he remembered of his youth on the farm in Armenia.