The Owens Lake Studio

Wrestle with the earth forever
Botanists, satellites, and politicians
Dig, dry, destroy
The butterfly effect
Uncanny playspace
Turbine testing and wind on demand
Fluid dynamic domestication
So, is it beautiful?
Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring...
Moving the [atmospheric] river




Exhibition
Curatorial Conversation
Gallery
About

So, is it beautiful? 

It probably depends who you ask. Environmental tragedy or not, it isn’t as if Owens Lake is sealed off with crime scene tape while remidiation goes on behind closed doors. Very much the opposite. As the land is public, you have the right in most places to come take a wander. 

Christo and Jean Claude’s unrealized project for hundreds of kites to fly over Owens Lake in the late 1980’s was not just an attempt to call attention to the environmental issues, but also a declaration of the site’s eerie beauty. Dust mitigation hadn’t begun by that point, so Christo’s provocative idea was to bring our attention quite literally into the dust filled skies with a field of huge yellow kites who recast the wind from an agent of danger into a supplier of whimsical beauty. 

Reluctant for attention upon what they saw as their scar or scraps, LADWP fought the project and Christo eventually used the fabric on his California umbrellas instead. Yet, artistic interest in Owens Lake has continued as relentlessly as LADWP cease and desist letters that follow. Photographers, bird watchers, artists of many forms, and a recent trend of crystal hunters, are all examples of people drawn to the unique interplay of natural processes and our human disruptions.

Clearly, the complex ecological story has added an intrigue of its own. There are plenty of other beautiful playas, but somehow here the tragedy has added richness, new shapes, and deeper story. If we abandon Owens Lake now, or if we never came in the first place, could it be as beautiful as it is today?




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