While working on the Heizer book for three years, I continued to write essays for a number of artists from Iceland to Australia, which included several photographers working above the American deserts. As a result, I’m now assembling The Desert Aerial, which so far includes revised and expanded essays on Michael Light, David Maisel, Will Roger, Julia Anand and Damon Sauer, and Trevor Paglen. I haven’t yet sought out a publisher for the book.
Julius Silver (CC BY-SA 4.0)
I also have a larger project currently underway, The Invention of the Vertical: Art and the Swiss Alps. Fieldwork for this book started in 2014 with an inquiry into how contemporary art is being used to shape Switzerland’s “brandscape.” Then in 2018 I participated in a two-week seminar on Land Art in the Alps. I’ll spend this September in Switzerland to conduct a third round of visits to artworks in both museums and throughout the landscape, after which I’ll be writing.
Since 2012 the Center for Art+ Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art has been working on a unique artists-in-residence program with the UC Berkeley Sagehen Creek Field Station based eight-and-a-half miles north of Truckee. I’m curating an exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC about the program that will open in spring 2020. Here’s a link to the Sagehen program.
And here’s a link to the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences.
Look forward to more updates here once the Heizer book appears.
Bill Fox