Art and Visionary Environments
of Nevada
A CLUI Close-up
In Nevada the landscape dominates. No wonder then,
that there are several unusual land art sites in the Silver State,
from the monumental earthworks of the sculptor Michael Heizer
to the folk art of what are sometimes called obsessed visionaries.
These personal expressions include the landscape in their palette,
each offering a different form of interraction with their environment...
Guru Road
Guru Road is a quarter-mile long dirt road that
is lined with scupltures and stones inscribed with the quips and
witticisms of its maker, Duane Williams, also known as "Doobie"
(for obvious reasons, we are told), also known as the Guru. Features
include the Desert Broadcast Imagination Station, a hut fashioned
as a sort of television control center with TV frames as windows.
The road, located outside of the remote desert town of Gerlach,
on the edge of the Black Rock Desert, was built over a number
of years, until the Guru died in 1995.
Thunder Mountain
Thunder Mountain is a complex of sculptures and
hand-made structures, made from debris found in the area (car
parts, bottles, wheels, railroad ties, etc.), and held together
in a matrix of concrete. It was built between 1967 and 1975, by
a man named Rolling Mountain Thunder, who lived in the site for
many years, and who called the site a monument to the plight of
Native Americans. The property, off the interstate in northern
Nevada, conatins a two-story structure (a second large building
known as "the hostel" burned down in the late 1980's),
surrounded by pathways and numerous sculptures. Rolling Mountain
Thunder, who was born Frank Van Zandt in 1911, committed suicide
at the site in 1989, and the monument is now abandoned and falling
into disrepair.
Rhyolite Ghost Town
and Sculpure Park
Rhyolite Ghost Town and Sculpture Park is a picturesque
ghost town in southern Nevada, with a split identity as a contemporary
sculpture park. The ghost town has a number of multi-story facades
still standing from the heyday of the town, which was around 1910,
when the population was near 10,000 (the remains of the bank building
is well known from an Ansel Adams photograph). A well preserved
bottle house (a house using bottles - something which was in abundance
in booming mining towns - as principal building materials) is
being watched over by volunteers and the BLM.
The collection of large sculptures began to appear
in the 1980's when a Poland-born Belgian artist named Albert Szukalski
began making fiberglass casts of area residents. He erected a
life-sized sculptural Last Supper, populated with ghostly fiberglass
forms. More sculptures, by other sculptors, followed over the
years, including one of a massive pink nude, constructed out of
cinder blocks.
Cathedral Canyon
Cathedral Canyon is a small natural canyon which
has been transformed into a rambling grotto of icons, statues,
and text panels. Religious in overall tone, the site has many
secular elements as well, and, though untended, is open to the
public. It is best viewed at night, when the multicolored lighting
system illuminates the individual displays, which are laid out
along the main pathway, and tucked into the walls and bushes in
the canyon. Cathedral Canyon was built mostly by Roland Wiley,
a lawyer from Las Vegas, who bought the 15,800 acre Hidden Hills
Ranch, on which the canyon lies, in 1972. Over the next thirty
years, until he died in 1993, Roland worked on the canyon, mainly
on weekend trips to the site from Las Vegas. Vandalism has taken
its toll on the remote site, though it remains a resilient and
sacred shrine to the landscape of Southern Nevada.
Double Negative
Near the town of Overton is an earthwork created
by the artist Michael Heizer in 1969 and 1970, called Double Negative.
The piece consists of two gouges in the edge of a mesa, in southern
Nevada. The 30 foot wide, 50 foot deep cuts, made by dynamite
and bulldozers, face each other from either side of a "scallop"
on the eroded edge of the natural landform, suggesting a continuous,
invisible, negative form between them. The piece, totaling almost
1,500 feet from end to end (including the space between), is now
property of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Michael Heizer has also been constructing a series
of monumental sculptures on his property near Hiko, Nevada, since
the 1970's. The work, called Complex City, includes three earthen
berms, with formed concrete components, and design elements of
over 1,000 feet in length.
