In his blog Airform Archives, Otis alum Steve Roden muses about the world of sound, the spoken word, artists and their work just to name a few. In this post from 4 June, he featured the thoughts of another alum- Robert Irwin in the context of Irwin's consideration of the southwestern desert.
Culled from a 1981 LACMA catalog, Irwin's quote is simple in its words but very rich in the mental image it encourages:
"it's a place where you go along for awhile, and there seems to be nothing happening... it's all just flat desert, you know, no particular events, no mountains or trees or what have you. and then all of a sudden it just takes on this sort of - i mean it's hard to explain, but it takes on almost a magical quality. it just suddenly stands up and almost hums, it becomes so beautiful...incredibly, the presence is so strong. then in twenty minutes it will simply stop. and i began to try and wonder why - what those events were really about - because they were so close to my interest, the quality of the phenomena"
Living in Los Angeles it's good to be reminded that this place that is so built up once was just as Irwin described.
Enjoy.
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