![]() ![]() ![]() Heavy earth moving machinery, which can be seen in the photographic and film records, was used to move 6,650 tons of material. Although Phillips had no previous involvement with artistic work, his knowledge of local materials and experience building dikes in the Great Salt Lake was indispensable. Smithson directed the building of the Jetty, working with a local contractor, Robert "Bob" Phillips. Originally Smithson was attracted to the Rozel Point location because of its abundance of salt crystals and the red algae which proliferated in that section of the Great Salt Lake. 2Ĭrystal formation, as he pointed out, follows a spiral pattern that he noted in many natural processes. From an early age, Smithson was an enthusiastic student of geological history, whose radical breaks and upheavals he saw inscribed in such materials. For example, the basalt rock comprising much of the Jetty is the product of extinct volcanoes. These included the physical site itself in its geological, geographical, and ecological complexity. Smithson's planning and design of the Spiral Jetty, like a number of his earthworks, involved a developing process, drawing on a number of factors. In 2017 Utah designated the Spiral Jetty as the state's official work of art. The artist's essay "The Spiral Jetty" and the eponymous film he made with Nancy Holt, can be considered as coordinate "non-site" aspects of the artwork. He understood these as industrial ruins, or entropic residues. While located in a relatively barren, unpopulated place, Smithson chose the site not only because of the vast surrounding landscape, but with reference to nearby abandoned oil rigs and the Golden Spike monument marking the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railway. The Jetty is a site-specific work, meant to interact with changing conditions of the surrounding water, land, and atmosphere. ![]() Robert Smithson designed and directed the construction of his iconic work the Spiral Jetty in April 1970. ![]()
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