“Nancy Holt: Photoworks” at Haunch of Venison
2012, 9:56
A video recorded by Haunch of Venison for Nacy Holt's Photoworks show, in which she discusses many of her photographic works as well as sculptures.
Nancy Holt
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OUT OF THE PAST: A CONVERSATION ON EVA HESSE
THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION with Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt was recorded on June 5, 1973, at the loft they shared on Greenwich Street. It was the last time I saw Bob, who died in a plane crash in Texas six weeks later. (Nancy has been my neighbor in Galisteo, New Mexico, since 1995.) I was writing my book on Eva Hesse at the time and was taping interviews with mutual friends and other people close to her. I was struggling with how to write this book on someone I had known so well—how to concentrate on the art without denying the life, and without letting the life overwhelm the art. Sol LeWitt, Eva’s best friend, was a constantly no-nonsense adviser on how to go about it. While I originally wanted to do a “smooth” edit of this text, Holt and the editors of Artforum persuaded me to leave it “rough,” as a kind of (embarrassing) time capsule. And so it stands.
—LRLLUCY LIPPARD: Mel [Bochner] mentioned a summer when you all saw a lot of each other.
ROBERT SMITHSON: I think it was ’66, because that was when I wrote my article “Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space,” where I included Eva.
NANCY HOLT: It’s true. We saw each other about four, sometimes five times a week. We went to Max’s [Kansas City] a lot, ate a lot at an Italian restaurant with Sol. I remember by the end of the summer Bob didn’t want to see an Italian dish ever again.
LL: When did you meet Eva? Do you remember?
RS: I think it must have been ’66. Sol introduced me to her.
NH: I remember exactly
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Sun Tunnels
SUN TUNNELS, 1973–76, is built on forty acres, which I bought in 1974 specifically as a site for the work. The land is in the Great Basin Desert in northwestern Utah, about four miles southeast of Lucan (pop. ten) and nine miles east of the Nevada border.
Sun Tunnels marks the yearly extreme positions of the sun on the horizon—the tunnels being aligned with the angles of the rising and setting of the sun on the days of the solstices, around June 21st and December 21st. On those days the sun is centered through the tunnels, and is nearly center for about ten days before and after the solstices.
