The New York Earth Room and The Lightning Field
I first heard about Walter De Maria back in the 80s. I was working in Soho at the time and someone or something brought The New York Earth Room to my attention. I visited it and a range of emotions and thoughts raced through me. It was primal and witty and profound. It smelled like dirt. It reeked of mortality. It was a tease: I wanted to plunge my hand in the dirt, put footprints on it, make my mark, but one can only look at the room through an open door. It was a perverse use of prime Manhattan real estate and I approved whole heartedly. It was way more than just several tons of dirt in a loft. In the early 90s I relocated to Santa Fe for a bit and had been told I had to visit De Maria’s The Lightning Field. Though I was in the same state, I never made it out there. I regret that. I hope to see it before I die.
Walter De Maria and A Life’s Work
In 2006 I was looking around for some archival footage of Paolo Soleri and came across a show called Soleri: City in the Image of Man, produced in 1972, soon after Arcosanti began to rise out of the desert. One aspect of the show features a series of people questioning Soleri, among them a philosophy professor, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark, futurist Alvin Toffler, architect Moshe Safdie, and in tandem two young earth artists, Michael Heizer and Walter De Maria. Heizer is cool and laid back, De Maria is nerdy and twitchy. (Heizer, by the way, is engrossed in his own life’s work, City, a colossal sculpture he began in the early 70s in the Nevada desert and that he continues to work on to this day.)
Here’s an exchange I love. De Maria, with Soleri’s Arcology: The City in the Image of Man open before him, asks the BIG question, and he seems a little uncomfortable asking it.
De Maria: Do you think… do you think you’ll get to build one of the big ones before you die?
Soleri: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even think about it. Those things, if they happen they happen. If it doesn’t happen… you do your best and pray.
Soleri answers with a smile and twinkling eyes. He is 52 years old, De Maria is 36.
Here’s a very misleading still pulled from the show.
If you watched this show when it was broadcast you would not have seen this superimposition, or more accurately, you would not have noticed it. It’s an edit splice, the joining of two pieces of film to make one piece of film. The joint is an overlap, the last frames of shot A and the first frames of shot B, and the frame above would have passed by your eyes so quickly you would not have noticed it. I stumbled upon it when I was looking at footage at Ucross back in March and happened to press “pause” on this frame. I took a screenshot and filed it away, thinking I’d find a place for it on the blog someday. I did not think I would use it to commemorate Walter De Maria’s death.
Rest in Peace, Walter De Maria. You knew how to ask questions, how to fill a room, how to summon lightning, how to dream big dreams.
Encouraged Reading
For a really wonderful article about how De Maria’s The New York Earth Room affected one man’s life, check out The Walter De Maria Work That Recalled My Past and Made My Future by art critic Jerry Saltz.
Donate Now!
[color-box color=”gray”]What’s A Life’s Work about? It’s a documentary about people engaged in projects they won’t see completed in their lifetimes. You can find out more on this page.
We recently ran a crowdfunding campaign and raised enough to pay an animator and license half of the archival footage the film requires. We need just a bit more to pay for licensing the other half of the archival footage, sound mixing, color correction, E&O insurance and a bunch of smaller things. When that’s done, the film is done! It’s really very VERY close!
So here’s how you can help get this film out to the world. It’s very simple: click the button…
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… and enter the amount you want to contribute (as little as $5, as much as $50,000) and the other specifics. That’s it. No login or registration required. Your contribution does not line my pocket; because the film is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, all money given this way is overseen by them and is guaranteed to go toward the completion of this film. Being fiscally sponsored also means that your contribution is tax-deductible. So why not do it? The amount doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you’re helping to bring a work of art into the world. And that, I think, is really exciting!
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