Spiral Jetty never ceases to change, surprising scholars and art writers. First it was its reappearance after twenty-plus years of being under water. Then, last summer, photos showed the Jetty had returned to its initial brown-soil color, its white-salt crust washed away by the rising waters of the Great Salt Lake. Now that Spiral Jetty is seemingly under water again, on and off (as of January 2006, the water level is 4195, exactly the same Smithson had when building the work), art bloggers have spread the news of an apparently massive cleaning in and around Spiral Jetty first reported by the Salt Lake Tribune (sltrib.com/search/ci_3425267). The small news clip reads:
Utah officials last month removed several tons of junk from Rozel Point, the area along the Great Salt Lake's north shore that is home to Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty.
"Anyone who has made the trip to see the famous Spiral Jetty . . . has passed through the area and certainly noted that it was an eyesore," says Joel Frandsen, director of the state Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which supervised the cleanup along with the state Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Workers removed 18 loads of junk and plugged more than a dozen abandoned oil wells.
Greg Allen of greg.org writes the “junk” is the trailer, the amphibious vehicle, the burned cars, everything that signaled the final stop right before the Jetty.
This is an enormous loss. What the Utah government calls "junk" and wiped out with the noble intention of tiding-up the Great Salt Lake shore and the access to Spiral Jetty is actually an important part of the earthwork and the Jetty experience, as anyone who's made the trip there can tell. Robert Smithson himself included the compound in his Spiral Jetty film as well as in the writings and documents that accompanied the earthwork. In his "The Spiral Jetty" essay published in 1972, Smithson wrote:
The mere sight of the trapped fragments of junk and waste transported one into into a world of modern prehistory.
Two dilapidated shacks looked over a tired group of oil rigs. A series of heavy black oil more like asphalt occur just south of Rozel Point. For forty or more years people have tried to get oil out of this natural tar pool. Pumps coated with black stickiness rusted in the corrosive salt air. A hut mounted on pilings could have been the habitation of "the missing link". A great pleasure arose from seeing all those incoherent structures. This site gave evidence of a succession of man-made systems mired in abandoned hopes.
Here is the difference between the eye of the functionary and the eye of the artist. One sees "junk" and an "eyesore", the other looks at evocative, poetic ruins fueling his thoughts.
Moreover, Smithson actually used the trailer ruins to create art, a 1970 piece called "Mica Spread", in which he tossed mica he had found in the site, creating both a mirror-like effect and a pouring. These actions are a constant in Smithson's art, as it is the use of ruins. The shed in which he spread mica in Utah came after completing in Ohio "Partially Buried Woodhsed", a work close in concept and appearance. A photowork, "Mica Spread" was also recently shown in a video directed by Jane Crawford and produced for the Los Angeles-Dallas-New York Robert Smithson retrospective.
The beauty and magic of the ruins, and their being a beacon. The trailer and other ruins were the last step and stop before the Jetty, the sign that told the visitor "you're there". "After the trailer, park and walk to the Jetty". This guidance will never be given again.
Blogger Todd Gibson wrote about the trailer junk and said:
The refuse on the site isn't limited to the trailer. And it's clear that the junk here isn't going anywhere soon.
Now it is. The soaring popularity achieved by Robert Smithson and Spiral Jetty have contributed greatly to this destruction.
Notoriously inept blogger Tyler Green, whose understanding of Robert Smithson and Spiral Jetty is obviously very limited, will be happy. This "cleaning" is the first step towards that better access road he demands for the Jetty (Hotel? McDonald’s? Eight-lane highway? Airport at Rozel Point? Just ask, Mr. Feckless)
The Estate of Robert Smithson has not yet issued a word. Dia Art Foundation, owner and supposed caretaker of the monument is, as always, mute and dead. Despite installing prominent signs along the road to the earthwork (most likely the only work ever done by them at the site), the very-outdated website Dia maintains for Spiral Jetty (www.spiraljetty.org) still offers detailed directions, based in the now-destroyed trailer compound as a reference.
11. At this gate the Class D road designation ends. If you choose to continue south for another 2.3 miles, and around the east side of Rozel Point, you should see the Lake and a jetty (not the Spiral Jetty) left by oil drilling exploration in the 1920s through the 1980s. As you approach the Lake, you should see an abandoned trailer, an old amphibious landing craft, and an old Dodge truck.
From this location, the trailer is the key to finding the road to the Spiral Jetty. As you drive slowly past the trailer, turn immediately from the southwest to the west (right), passing on the south side of the Dodge, and onto a two-track trail that contours above the oil-drilling debris below. Only high clearance vehicles should advance beyond the trailer.
