Behind me I overheard someone say there was 'nothing in Utah, we went to Arches [National Park] this morning and that was it'. I turned around to see a gaggle of middle aged travelers crying into their Chardonnay over the lack of easily accessible and postcard-worthy scenery at 70mph along I-70.
As I was draining the oil and putting drywall screws behind the tires of their Prius later that night, I reflected upon the idea of 'being in the middle of nowhere'. Perhaps the 'nothing', I thought, (whether it be in Nevada, Utah, or entitled vacationers' heads) is necessary to produce the sublime experience of the 'not nothings' -- the mountains, people, and grandeur that rises from the sagebrush between the Wasatch and the Sierra. It takes a long time to get to GBNP, and maybe it should. Otherwise we might not be ready for it. You don't just swing by here on your way somewhere else.
What makes GBNP so interesting is what's not here -- out of very flat, muted-colored sagebrush plains springs a 13,000 ft mountain 8000ft higher than the basin below. Not only does the 'Sagebrush Ocean' juxtapose the peaks, but there is also an absence of light, sound, people, and bright colors . . . the anthesis of Las Vegas, the unfortunate mental image most people have of Nevada. In other words, the holes are what make it a Whiffle Ball -- not the plastic.
As an artist, I decided I should be very concerned about what Willliam Fox in his book 'Mapping the Empty' described as 'the deeply conflicted condition of the postmodern artist living under existential guilt over conquest of the region'. Using that idea of the nothing-ness of negative space might be a good way to get over this existential guilt I didn't know I had.
Like all good and sneaky artists, I started looking for some other folks who had already explored this concept so I could steal their secrets. One name that keeps coming up is Michael Heizer, a nutty genius living out in the middle of nowhere building a full-size sculpture of a city. It's called 'City'. It's the size of the Washington Mall, including the museums.
He's been working on it for forty years, and instead of reasonable tools like a paintbrush or plasma torch, he and his crew uses earthmoving equipment. Unfortunately, the only way to view it (it's not done, you see -- it will only open to the public upon completion) is through satellite images. With a little probing I found the location in south-central Nevada, although I decided against an unannounced visit as Mr. Heizer is inclined to shoot trespassers (another sign of a fellow existential-guilt ridden sneaky
artist, I might add). Take a look at the coordinates 38.03400 N 115.44100 W in Google Earth and you should be able to get a glimpse.
So, to understand what Heizer has to do with negative space and Nevada we must take a look at the works he did you can actually see without getting filled with negative spaces yourself. Specifically, the Perforated Object 27 at the Federal Courthouse Building in Reno and Double Negative, also in Nevada. Perforated Object is a huge steel chunk with a bunch of holes in it, and Double Negative is an enormous trench dug into the edge of a canyon (like 240,000 tons of missing earth enormous). Both are awe-inspiring and made me more aware of what wasn't there than what was.
By extension, it also made me think about things that aren't here in the Park that aren't physical: lots of noise, light pollution, traffic. For example, there is so little ambient light at night that GBNP is one of the US's premier stargazing locations. At a recent stargazing with a park ranger (self-proclaimed 'dark ranger', the second coolest phrase behind 'galactic core' heard that night), all of our eyes were adjusting to the lack of light when a flash lit up the line of people waiting to look through the park's telescope.
Everyone looked around, expecting an apology from the sheepish person who must have accidentally turned on their flashlight. The flash was actually a momentary reflection off the solar panels of an orbiting Iridium satellite passing miles and miles overhead. It's that dark here.
To read more about Heizer's inspired lunacy, take a look at:
doublenegative.terasen.net
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?ex=1265432400&en=46be92f2c266e591&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.moca-la.org/museum/pc_artwork_detail.php?&acsnum=85.105&keywords=heizer&x=0&y=0
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