The town of Wendover lies on the border of Utah
and Nevada, and is the location of the most developed of the CLUI
American Land Museum sites. The CLUI complex, on the edge of town,
consists of an exhibit hall, studio, residence facilities, and
remote landscape sites. A residency program, funded partially
by the National Endowment for the Arts, has hosted over 100 artists
and researchers from Maine to New Zealand, who find inspiration
in this remarkable environment of salt flats, bombing ranges,
and casinos. The Center’s exhibit spaces include indoor
galleries and outdoor sites, framed vistas and experiential experiments.
CLUI Residents
More than a dozen CLUI residents passed through
this year, some new, some returning to complete their residency
or install an exhibit, and some who have come back to help maintain
the site and continue their research and projects independently.
Daniel Mihalyo’s installation in Exhibit Hall 2 (pictured
above), is now available to the public. Click
here for a map and directions to the CLUI Studio / Exhibit
Hall 2 building. Mihalyo and his partner operate an architectural
shop called Lead Pencil Studio in Seattle. For his Wendover Residence
project, which he started last year, he examined the foundations
of the region - that is, the structures on the surface and underground
that support, or at one time supported, buildings. There are abandoned
foundations all over the region, ghosts of structures from an
earlier time, as well as new foundations, visible in the early
stages of building. He photographed, sketched, and studied both
these forms of foundations, one representing the birthing of buildings,
the other the death and decaying. His exhibit features representations
of a variety of regional foundations, in sculpture, sketches,
and photographs.
Visitors
Among the hundreds of visitors to
CLUI Wendover was the tin can weaver and artist Slim Sirnes, who
stopped by the Center’s Residence Support Unit on his way
out to the midwest, with his colorful truck and mobile gallery/trailer,
fashioned out of woven strips of aluminum, peeled out of soda
cans. Slim is assisting with the creation of an art car park next
to the abandoned Goldfield Hotel, in his home town of Goldfield,
Nevada.
The Work Party
The annual Wendover Work Party took place in
July. Two dozen CLUI volunteers arrived in town, from all over
the country, to stay for a week and to repair and upgrade the
facilities. Work on a new and improved visitor center for the
CLUI started during this time, and should open in the Summer of
2003. The current visitor center and Exhibit Halls are open 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, with a remote push-button entry system.
Displays inside give details of the remarkable Wendover area and
the work of participants in the CLUI Wendover Residents Program.
The Movies
Two monolithic Hollywood films shot in Wendover
this year, adding to the complexity of the context of the place.
The Core, a movie about drilling a hole to the center of the earth,
filmed on the base and in the hills, and The Hulk, directed by
Ang Lee, even used CLUI buildings as backdrops. Plaster from the
trashed Hulk sets filled dumpsters on the salt flats, making for
an interesting collection of compounded voids.
Land Art
This Summer, the Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s
1970 sculpture in the Great Salt Lake, emerged from under the lake
surface for the first time in several years. The jetty is totally
white and encrusted with salt, having spent most of its life submerged
in the salty lake. Park Service representatives say that over a
thousand people have made the pilgrimage in the last six months.
This photo was taken in September 2002, by Smithson scholar and
CLUI Independent Interpreter Hikmet Loe.
