Art of the Outdoors

My classmate, Hass, and I were standing on a rooftop on the lower west side of Manhattan watching a dance performance taking place in a vacant lot across the street when he nudged me and whispered, “That’s Robert Smithson.” The tall guy to my left at the parapet, in a cowboy hat and black trench coat, was solemnly staring down at the ground, along with a couple dozen other bohemes of the downtown art scene who had climbed four flights of rickety stairs in a derelict, cheese warehouse to view the show.

The Holy Well

Excavation of the hillside spring revealed layers of geologic stratification. Top soil lay on coarse gravel over pure sand on top of clay hardpan. The design called for ground water that trickled out of the sand layer to be trapped in a hollow under a half-shell overhang. Recycled slate from building foundation ruins and cobbles from a gravel pit were combined to shape the dry stone installation.

A Ripple Effect in Stone and Steel

As part of its 40th anniversary, the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont commissioned me to create a permanent, interactive, environmental art piece. The result is a 1,000 sq. ft. dry stone and stainless steel sculpture that rises like a geologic upthrust from the open space alongside the museum entryway. Visitors can walk, climb and sit on the undulant surfaces of the work, or, simply view it on their way to, and from, the building.

Finn Island at Landmark College

During the month of May, a 22 meter long sculpture surfaced on the quad at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont. The dorsal fin of the granite and earth construction rises 2 meters above the MacFarlane Science, Technology & Innovation Center lawn. Once the cover plants are established on the earthen swells of the shark body, the piece will become an inviting land feature for students and faculty to congregate for outdoor classes and conversation.

Cairn With a Twist

As solid as land art is, it’s capable of absorbing an unlimited amount of meaning. Each viewer brings a unique perspective and adds a bit of their own story to the experience of the work. The memory of the work that they go away with is a blend of what they brought and what they discovered while there. The meaning of the work is modified by every viewer. Over time, with many viewings, that adds up to a hefty load of ephemeral meanings, none of which physically impact the land art. It stays the same as its meaning changes.

Rock Springs Revisited

After decades of assessing the attributes of inanimate objects in a direct and uncompromising way, I find myself in terrain where taking that path of least resistance only leads down a slippery slope to nowhere special. From a distance, the long way around appears to be inefficient and wasteful, but once the trip begins, the side tracks and stops along the way become the definition of the journey. The people met, the conversations had, the agreements made, are memorialized in the installation that’s left behind. They become the substance, if not the point, of the project. The public work now belongs to those who meander by, and will, I hope, become their memory touchstone.

Stone Clouds Materialized

The shape of a project is pointy at opposite ends and lumpy in the middle. The spark that starts things off may be as quick and simple as seeing a cornstalk-stubbled field sprinkled with the till of a bygone glacier, and thinking, “What would it take to put those stones back up into the sky from whence they fell?” In between that thought and standing under Stone Clouds at Shelburne Museum yesterday was a year-long ride’s worth of lumps and bumps. The unknown is an uneven landscape. Highs are best employed to gain speed for the roll up out of the lows ahead. Uncertainty provides its own propulsion.

Rock Springs

Like other environmental art works I’ve done, Rock Springs is in, of and for its home place. The 32’x44’x5’ sculpture invites exploration. The interwoven coils of dry stone walls rise and fall underfoot as they’re traversed. Broad top stones elevate viewers above deep fissures separating the walls. Hand trimmed and set sandstone blocks comprise the double-faced walls, with architectural remnants repurposed for top stones.

Amphitheater Studies

Amphitheaters have been an interest of mine since the early 1980’s when I applied for and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study them. Soon after, I was commissioned to build amphitheater-like seating behind the home plate backstop of our local softball field. The granite terraces have become a well used addition to the summer scene in Brattleboro, Vermont. Since then, I’ve been able to design and build lots of stone seating arrangements but nothing quite like a classic, half-shell amphitheater of old, until now.

Land Art for the Moment

The notion that great things come from small beginnings is canonized in the proverb; “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. And so it was with Pumpkin Seed, the dry stone garden enclosure that grew on a windy knoll in southern New Hampshire last winter. What started as a concept in clay, the size of my hand, turned into a ring of stone too high for me to see over.

Newfoundland: Not Just About “The Rock”

Newfoundland’s well deserved nickname is “The Rock.” You can’t go anywhere on the island without running into some new geologic wonder to explore. An ample supply of loose building stone is what first drew me to Canada’s easternmost province but in the five, annual pilgrimages I’ve made to Newfoundland since 2010 I’ve discovered that there’s much more going on there.

Diamond Mines

My land art piece, Diamond Mines, is now in a happy marriage with Glenmorangie distillery. The Diamond Mines from 2011, with photo by Peter Mauss/ESTO, has been licensed for a Glenmorangie Signet print advertising campaign. See below for the TICKON Sculpture Park Catalog text.

Art, Environmental Art, SculptureDan SnowJanuary 12, 2015dan snow, diamond mines, esto, featured, peter mauss, tickon sculpture park

A Year in Stone

Once again, dry stone construction has taken me around the seasons. Work that employed the simplest of means culminated in a complexity of projects and events. There were presentations, workshops, consultations and proposals. There were utilitarian constructions, memorials and art installations. There was even a grant awarded and inclusion in a magazine article and a book. The year in stone took me around New England, to other countries and back in time.

Place or Space

This week celebrates the publication by Aalto University of a ground-breaking Environmental Art book. Edited by my friend and comrade in art, Markku Hakuri, Place or Space (Paikka vai tila) tells the story of places, spaces and situations that the contributing writers encounter when reflecting on the potential of art as a provider of social commentary, and as a shaper or a challenger of the visual appearance of our environment.

Art, Books, Environmental ArtDan SnowNovember 3, 2014art, books, environmental art, featured, finland, markku hakuri, nature, place or space, teaching

A Stone Turtle

When a favorite customer asked me if I would consider making an animal, any animal, out of dry stone last summer I immediately said, ‘yes’. Then the puzzling began. What animal shape could I fashion that would be recognizable, and also durable, using only dry stone techniques? It was especially important to the customer that children could climb on the completed piece. With a site in their field picked out as the location, I began thinking about possibilities.

Art, Environmental ArtDan SnowOctober 28, 2011design, dummerston, feature, model, project, sculpture, stone, stone turtle, turtle, vermont

TICKON Diamond Mines Land Art

“Diamond Mines” is an abstract, site-specific sculpture built of loose, natural stone. The work is situated on westward-sloping ground in a grove of mature beech trees. Wooded hills rise to the north and south. Park paths wind along the west and north sides of the sculpture. To the west, Tranekær lake and castle can be viewed. ‘Diamond’ is the perimeter, outline shape of the sculpture. The shapes of the nineteen interior facets are also diamond. There are a total of eighty-five obtuse and acute angles in the sculpture. The stones are set on their near-vertical axis in the construction, pointing up and down in the wall faces. In “Diamond Mines” there are diamonds within diamonds within a diamond.

TICKON Diamond Mines

The building of “Diamond Mines” was a delightful experience due to the many wonderful people who helped make it possible. Thanks go to my new Danish friends; Alfio, Lone, Ole, Birthe and Trine. To on-site workers Francesca and Jared goes my grateful appreciation. Always behind the scenes and in the middle of it all was Elin, who supported me in every moment and was my guiding light at every turn.

TICKON Diamond Mines in the News

Earlier this week, the local Fyn newspaper stopped by the TICKON site for an interview. Hopefully the article will be available online within a few days. For now - a couple of photos.