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Earthworks: When nature’s most basic elements become art

Earthworks is an artistic movement begun in the 1970s that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific art forms, structures, and sculptures. Instead of employing canvas and the palette as the materials to create art, and the traditional gallery or museum in which to exhibit their work, environmental artists choose to engage the natural world in an active and immediate way, making and placing their art in and with the physical environment itself. Their works subsequently succumb to the cycles of the seasons and the elements, which transform the art forms through the inevitable processes of erosion, molding, decay, even flowering. Beginning with Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Christo’s Running Fence, we will examine Earthworks from the 1970s to present day, concluding with the creations of Andy Goldsworthy.

Instructor: Rhea Higgins

Two sessions, Mondays, Oct. 12, 19, 4:30–6:30 at the Wasch Center