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From Ice Ages to Dry Playas:
An artistic Exploration of Ancient Lake Lahontan
Stanford University Continuing Studies
Spring 2001
Photographs and documentation from our Mono
Lake to Death Valley class last year.
From the glaciated peaks of Sierra Nevada to the fault bound mountains
and valleys of the Basin and Range, torrents of water once flowed down
mountain sides into ancient Lake Lahontan, filling a necklace shaped body
of water which grew to cover most of northern Nevada. Fifteen thousand
years later, it's once lush shorelines and tributaries have been replaced
by the arid desert of ruler flat playas, stranded shoreline berms and
curious desert lakes that we know today by the names of Pyramid Lake,
Black Rock Desert, Carson Sink and Lake Winnemucca.
This course is a lecture/field workshop to re-imagine and trace
this ancient lake and river system with a series of Land Art works created
during a five-day fieldtrip. The course will begin with a series of lectures
on the geologic and cultural history of the region as well as a survey
of the major practitioners of Land Art (Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer,
Andy Goldsworthy, etc.). During the fieldtrip, each course participant
will create a series of site-specific installations at compelling locations
along this ancient water system using materials found in the local landscape
This workshop is participating in The Terrestrial Map- a global Land-art
project that is tracing the physical pathways of various large-scale planetary
systems. Visit the web site at www.TerrestrialMap.org
for more information.
Schedule:
Thursdays 7:00-8:50PM
6 weeks, April 12th - May 24th
Installation fieldtrip: May 31st - June 4th
Note: This is a wilderness camping trip. Be prepared to sleep outdoors
and help with cooking and cleaning.
Coordinator:
Jim Mason (Anthropoloy MA 94): Director of the Rosetta Disk Project
at the Long Now Foundation (www.longnow.org) Also Founder and Director
of the New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford and The Terrestrial Map
project (www.terrestrialmap.org). General portfolio at www.WhatIAmUpTo.com
Lecturers:
Professor Elizabeth Miller: Stanford Professor in the Department
of Geological and Environmental Sciences, School of Earth Sciences. Current
research focuses on the origin of the Sierra Nevada and the Basin and
Range province.
Mark Brest Van Kempen: Noted Bay Area outdoor installation artist,
currently a visiting faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute.
You may have recently seen his work at City Site S.F. or the creek restoration
project at the Palo Alto Cultural Center.
Registration starts Monday March 5th. You can register
online or call (650) 725-5503
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