Artist: Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison
Title: Spoil’s Pile
Year created: 1977-1979
Location: Art Park, New York
Materials: diverted construction waste, seeds
What is the piece’s impact? it led to the creation of a 3000 pile earthwork, which gradually became a 20 acre flowering meadow.
How does this project relate to this change as art?
The Harrisions used what would have been waste organic material to reclaim a site and to return it to a “natural” site with diverse habitats. It’s an artistic intervention that changed an existing landscape.
What makes this an artistic project?
This project was conceived and managed by “leading pioneers of the eco-art movement” (source). Moreover, the work was commissioned by the Art Park Foundation. All truckloads were given a tax deduction for donation of art material. As Art Park was closer than the original dump sites, it was cheaper to dump at Art Park.
Notes: For more information visit: http://theharrisonstudio.net/?page_id=131
Other work by the same artists: