CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE’S NEW WORK; DRILLERS STILL EYE SPIRAL JETTY LAND
The Times’ Jane Ure Smith reports that, for the latest project of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artists who wrapped up the Reichstag and dressed Florida’s islands in skirts have headed into the countryside and swapped seasons. This time, their raw materials are mountains, fabric, water, and summer light. For Over the River, Christo and Jeanne-Claude plan to suspend a canopy of silvery fabric panels above a forty-mile stretch of the Arkansas River in Colorado. Using six miles of fabric, there will be breaks for bridges. Rafters—and this is the most rafted river in the United States, attracting three hundred thousand people each summer—will be able to glide beneath the panels, peering up at the sky through the loosely woven fabric. Highway 50 hugs the south bank, so those who don’t take to the water will have an alternative view. The new work employs the same material the artists used for the Reichstag, but with a looser weave. “The fabric will mirror the light,” says Christo. “In the early morning, it becomes rosy; in sunlight, it’s platinum; and at sunset, warm and golden.” Renderings of the project can be found here.
In other news, a Canadian company is not giving up on its hopes to drill for oil in the Great Salt Lake near Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, according to the Associated Press via the Deseret News. Keith Hill, president of Pearl Montana Exploration of Calgary, Alberta, said that the company is addressing shortcomings in its previous applications and will resubmit them as soon as possible. The Utah Department of Natural Resources recently returned the company’s applications to drill two exploratory wells from barges about five miles from Spiral Jetty. State officials say the company didn’t provide answers to several key questions about how the project near Rozel Point would be carried out, such as whether water rights had been obtained for the project and whether possible effects on cultural artifacts in the area, including Spiral Jetty, had been evaluated. The company also never provided the state with diagrams it asked for with details about drilling rigs, barges, staging areas, or equipment that would be used in case of a spill. The company’s application in January drew protests from art aficionados and environmentalists who worried about the effects of the project, especially its proximity to the jetty, a fifteen-hundred-foot coil of basalt rock and soil built by Smithson in 1970. The jetty was given to New York’s Dia Art Foundation as part of Smithson’s estate.
