This stone enclosure sculpture located on the southeast corner of the Western Washington University campus is a piece by the architectural visual artist Nancy Holt. Holt was an artist who specialized in earth works and land art. However, what made her so unique as a sculpture artist was her positioning of her pieces. Rock Rings is a piece that is based upon the celestial mapped layout of the northern star that coastal navigators use for directions, thus making this massive sculpture an accurate compass. This specific piece contains two rings, both 10 feet tall, the inner ring with a diameter of 20 feet, the outer with a diameter of 40 feet and both with 2 archway doors and 6 holes.  The 4 arched doorways are aligned directly with the north and south compass markers and the holes inside of the piece are a reference to the east and west points to give a better sense of direction onto the landscape.

Nancy Holt was born on April 5th, 1938 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She attributes frequently moving around the east coast as a child an aid to being able to see things that were more commonly overlooked or unacknowledged which lead to her artistic inspiration. She studied as an undergraduate at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts with an interest in science and art but became a biology major through her passion of “unusual plants and animals and the systems that kept them alive”. After graduating in 1960 she moved to Manhattan, New York and 2 years later both of her parents passed away, noting that her “mixture of grief and liberation” contributed to her idea of creative self as it caused her to dive into her own psychology.

Holt was known for many pieces within her life and career. Her most famous piece “Sun Tunnels” (1976), is located in a barren part of the Great Basin Desert in Utah, known to be only accessible by dirt roads and no buildings in sight. The work is made of four concrete tubes, each weighing about 22 tons and oriented to align with the patterns of the sun and the stars. The goal of her piece was to be more personable with nature. Nancy said in a 2012 interview that “Sun Tunnels was a way of bringing the universe back to human scale…and was a way of orienting one in space and time. According to the Parafin gallery, Nancy Holt’s focus was towards vision, memory, perception, time and space as she was intrigued by the earth and its constantly changing axis.

During the period that this was created, feminist art was on the up rise. Since the 1960s, women had begun to redefine what art identity was. According to Pierre Gour, a professor at Western Washington University, this was the shift of post-modernism, in which many female artists rose with new techniques and ideas in order to tackle the ideas of social constructs and concepts within society. Holt was one of the many women who had started this movement, as she began to actively self-publish and create most pieces. Although Holt didn’t tackle controversial topics, her goal was more to let a viewer interpret her pieces in a peaceful environment.

Works Cited

Artwork by Hannah Lewis and Katana Sol and Photography by Sam Galus

 

“Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings.” WESTERN GALLERY, Western Washington University, westerngallery.wwu.edu/sculpture/stone-enclosure-rock-rings.

 

Colker, David. “Nancy Holt Dies at 75; Artist of Large-Scale Works.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Feb. 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/nancy-holt-dies-at-75-artist-of-large-scale-works/2014/02/18/70cc6b86-9812-11e3-afce-3e7c922ef31e_story.html?utm_term.

 

Zurakhinsky, Michael. “Nancy Holt Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, The Art Story Foundation, www.theartstory.org/artist-holt-nancy.htm.

 

“Nancy Holt | Avignon Locators 1972-2012.” Nancy Holt | Avignon Locators 1972-2012. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2017. http://www.nancyholt.com/holt.html

 

“Nancy Holt.” Parafin | Artists | Nancy Holt, Parafin Galleries, www.parafin.co.uk/artists–nancy-holt.html.