from 516 ARTS to the Field contd.

   
LEFT: Matt Coolidge, The Center for Land Use Interpretation with Landscape Display Unit A temporary site project installed on the fringe of Albuquerque.
RIGHT: Edward Ranney, Entrance, Star Tunnel, Looking South, Star Axis, NM, 10/8/09, 2008, silver gelatin print, Featured in The Shape of Time: Photographs of Star Axis by Edward Ranney, 1979-2009 at the Albuquerque Museum, Edward Ranney has photographed Star Axis every year since 1979, documenting the growth of this earth sculpture by Charles Ross in Northern New Mexico.

Matthew Coolidge of The Center for Land Use Interpretation says, “New Mexico vibrates with the resonance between the starry plasma of the cosmos and the firmness of terrestrial terra firma.” Coolidge focuses on the “technological sublime” of this place. For many, it is the basic, natural elements of the light and the horizon as well as the togetherness with other artists in our remote location that contribute to the artistic magnetic pull here.

Rebecca Solnit wrote about the desert, “So much of this landscape for me is the tiny scale of insects and flowers and pebbles and then looking up to see the rugged formations and the blue of distance on the horizon, as though some kind of familiar middle scale were absent, but like mortality this too may be the true scale of things made more evident in this clear laboratory of light.” (1)

The LAND/ART project grew out of a group of founding organizations together with 516 ARTS, The Albuquerque Museum, the Contemporary Art Society of New Mexico, THE LAND/an art site and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. It is remarkable to me how so many artists, writers, performers, curators, organizations and supporters came together to make LAND/ART possible. By working together and pooling our efforts, we created a “critical mass” for New Mexico, each participating in something larger than any of us could do individually. - Director of 516 ARTS, Suzanne Sbarge

(1) From Elemental, essay by Rebecca Solnit for Grasslands / Separating Species catalog, Radius Books, 2009

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