one million chunks of asphalt

!Viva Andy Goldsworthy!

this is to prove that i did artwork during my six week utah holiday

it's called "Gateway to Art City"
'Art City' is the nickname of Springville, the city that you would be driving to if you were to pass this Bild driving south. Springville has boasted an art museum since the early days of Utah development so I'm sure it's nickname was well-earned. But when you start to think of Salt Lake City as a burgeoning art scene on the cusp of innovation in comparison, well...its cute.
if you were driving north you would soon be in Provo and also the neighborhood where i lived in four houses during the last three years.

i decided to make this soon after arriving to Utah when Gian and i went to a post-apocalypticalesqe site of swampy ruins we know as "Devil's Land". it was also a symbolic closing adventure - a sort of goodbye to the cult of youth and freedom - as Gian was about to be married. as seductive as Devil's Land can be on the sensibilities of a visual artist, i opted for the dumping grounds between the road and the wooded area leading to Devil's Land.

this is how it might catch your eye driving south

and this is how you might see it driving north.

there were some computers in among the detritus. and i used a couple of coolers and a lego...and a penzoil bottle. besides that it's pure asphalt.

there are a couple of stories involved in the making of this Bild.

one of them is that i had to build it three different times.

the other has to do with three different sherrifs. (here are three shots of the back)

after about five hours of work the first stack collapsed when i got about five feet high. i waited for another beautiful spring december day and built it stronger, this time in four hours. but by this time i had lost my camera and didn't have proof. this second attempt was either shoved or decimated by nature. so the third time took me a little over three hours and i found my camera!

sherrifs were confused by my activity. they all drove s.u.v.s. the first one sort of patrolled me. drove down the dirt road to the junk pile and watched me for a while. finally drove back and rolled down his window - the signal, i assumed, for me to approach. apparently i was lucky to be in some sort of free zone which was neither public nor private so he was good natured about not understanding the point of my labors.
sheriff number two looked just like sherrif number one and so i treated him as a return customer until i realized the difference: number two was unafraid to voice his opinion, "you're kind of a strange guy, arentya?" "i guess so" "well, can't hold anything against ya for being weird...carry on!"
sherrif number three had noticed the previous unsuccessful stacks and was probably even more perplexed by my tenacity in rebuilding. i like to think that the only critique of this piece happened around the watercooler of the local sherrif's office. mabye it will even become a sort of story they remember when all that is left is those two trees - a part of policeman lore of the bizzarre.

for all i know this is still standing (although unlikely)...maybe one of you utahns can scope out the situation for me and report on it's longevity/demise.

p.s. i thought it was cool that people would add things to my creation - someone stuck that compact disc in there. those things really catch the light.
p.p.s speaking of demise r.i.p. most of the clothes i was wearing in this photo