Not Spiral Jetty…

Not Spiral Jetty: On Getting Lost and Finding… When I arrived at what I thought was Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in Northern Utah, I was struck by how destroyed it was. I marched out onto the jetty with cameras in hand determined to document the decay and beauty of it.After traveling back on the dirt road we stopped at The Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory Summit, where the east railroad line met up with the west railroad line. It was there that the last ‘golden’ spikes were driven into the ground by the Irish immigrant crews from the east and the Chinese immigrant crew from the west.I wondered if Smithson had connected his choice of site to the site of this prominent, yet little know, historical landmark. As I stood on the remnants of the railroad tracks I pondered the similarities of the jetty that I had just walked.It was not until hours away from the Spiral Jetty and the Golden Spike, while driving through Utah’s desolate salt beds, that I realized that it hadn’t been the Spiral Jetty that I had seen. I shuffled back through my maps and directions.”Drive or walk .6 miles west-northwest around Rozel point and look toward the lake. The spiral jetty should be in sight.”I had been so close; I hadn’t gone that extra .6 miles around the corner. I had been standing on some other jetty, some jetty not made in the name of art. The humiliation stung.It wasn’t until I looked at the photographs and video footage that I had taken at both Spiral Jetty and the Golden Spike that I realized the humor in it all. And the importance that chance played in that day. My installation, Not Spiral Jetty . . . On Getting Lost and Finding . . . .” is a rumination on fate, luck and the possibilities of what you might find when you make that wrong turn.

Not Spiral Jetty…On Getting Lost and Finding… at sixteen:one gallery, Santa Monica, January 2004