Art - at what cost?

Today's post is about more rock art; serious rock art - like, say, sculpture using a 340-ton boulder:

Boulder to be used in "Levitated Mass",
an installation by Michael Heiser at LA Museum of Contemporary Art
(photo © THIS BLOG)

Artist Michael Heiser's installation piece called Levitated Mass will consist of this 21' high boulder suspended over a 456'-long trench through which viewers will walk underneath it:

prelim sketch © the artist
(posted at infrascapedesign HERE)

Minor logistical problem, though: the granite boulder Heiser picked for this work is 106 miles from the site. They've build a 290-foot-long transport structure of steel girders to take it thru 3 counties, under permits from 100 governmental bodies, with help from more than 100 utilities, over roads and bridges chosen because they should be able to support the 1.2 million pound load. Total cost is expected to exceed $10M. The moving project is described HERE; a cool video of the preparation process is HERE.

Heiser is considered part of a school of (mostly-American) artists who began doing "Land Art" in the late 1960's (WIKI is HERE). He's done several well-known works in this field, including "Double Negative", a 1500-foot-long sculpture for which he blasted and excavated two 30' wide X 50' deep trenches in a desert canyon 80 miles SE of Las Vegas:

Double Negative
(original photo for Las Vegas Sun, by Sam Morris)

Since about 1970, he's been working on a massive work called "City":

"City", work in progress by Michael Heiser
(photo by Tom Vinetz, NY Times);
(satellite images are available from Google Earth HERE)

in which he emulates ancient monuments and mounds in concrete, stone and steel structures up to 70'-80' high and 1/4 mile long (that's a cement truck at right in the photo above). Total cost is expected to exceed $25M; more detail HERE.

So, to recap: $10 million, $25 Million; these are BIG numbers - especially in today's troubled economic times. For some, this cost issue raises a pretty obvious question: Are you KIDDING ME?  Granted, it's all funded with private money, but: are you telling me we couldn't find a better way to spend this money? Valid point, I think. This amounts to artwork competing for resources with basic, survival-level human needs. As one LA Times commenter recently pointed out, this just might be the kind of disconnect that the "Occupy Movement" is talking about.

I'm pondering this point myself.

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Today's creation is: a forest. We started production (and mailing - first batch went out last night!) of this year's crop of Christmas cards, including a little handmade popup tree insert. I recently posted the image and some prototypes. Last night I made the first 60 of the little buggers:

(photo and design © me)

which was waaay more handwork than I envisioned, but they do really have the feel I wanted. Success, I think - despite the work required.
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