YOUTHCAN @ THE WING

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What a blast we had on our trip on Tuesday!

Here’s a recap of what we did -

After trekking down to Kent via bus, we headed to the Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks by Herbert Bayer.  How neat that the whole site can act as a dam!  The rolling “wave” hills, bridges and other man-made land structures were built to interrupt the flow of water in the event of a flood or storm, but for us they were awesome obstacles in a huge game of hide-and-seek tag.

After exploring Mill Creek Park, we again boarded to bus to a different earthwork by Robert Morris.  To reach Johnson Pit #30, we huffed and puffed up a huge hill – but the view at the top was definitely rewarding!  Located on the site of a formerly abandoned sand and gravel pit, the earthwork was a perfect and challenging playing field for a three-sided game of capture the flag.  Even though Robert Morris made the work as part of a widespread “land reclamation” effort, YouthCAN reclaimed the earthwork for its own purposes, too!

Hey YouthCAN!

Here are some thoughts for you all as you spend your Summer Studio time thinking about earthworks and environmental heritage.  Perhaps they will help you come up with your own ideas about environmental heritage and inspire some of your art-making!  Look out at the bottom – I posted the images from my presentation if you want to look at them on your own.

• The land is kind of like the ultimate keeper of history – it has been a witness to change as well as had change made to it by both people and natural forces.
• When people move to different geographic locations they create new histories, homelands, and heritages for themselves on those lands. Specific areas or locations become places where people create their identities and shape their own stories.  That’s what ENVIRONMENTAL HERITAGE refers to – people’s connection to the land and how their own cultural heritage is tied to the geography they inhabit.
• The land also provides natural resources needed for survival – people need to plant crops, farm and collect water in order to keep on living!
• Many artists create work involving the land to analyze and critique human activity on our earth and how we are destroying, using up, or mistreating the land that we live on.  Artists like these often want to move beyond just creating art that has a visual effect or purpose, and pursue projects that create social change and stir other people’s consciousness about how we treat our earth.
• Some artists physically manipulate the land and other natural objects and materials to create work that highlights the possibilities and wonders of the natural world.  For example, some artists create work that is meant to be outside and left open to the elements so that it changes over time, and some artists build new structures within untouched spaces to challenge the ways we generally think about nature.

APA Earthworks Artists

Here’s my presentation if you want to check it out!