Artwork for the Vasquez Rocks visitor center in Agua Dulce California.
Constructed through a series of workshops, designed in collaboration with Jenna Didier and executed with the help of dozens of volunteers interested in the larger issues surrounding the project and community. For this project, we were selected because of our interest in revealing the forces at work within the park that have made it a geological wonder. Tatavian rock hieroglyphics as well as other artifacts have been found at the site, as well as the extremely unique geology and its pop culture identity all fed into the shape and function of this artwork. The materiality is what ties it all together though. We wanted to experiment with rammed earth to test its practicality for desert construction and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to create a sort of laboratory to understand the performance of different cement and earth mixtures. Hence each layer of rammed earth has a different formulation and the artwork is designed to erode, hence revealing its own performative characteristics. At the same time this erosion reveals keep sakes placed in the earth by particpants who worked to create the project. Hopefully to bring their own kin here years hence and explain the significance of the project to them, decades hence. Creating a poetic multi-generational relationship to the site and its geology.
