Photo by George Steinmetz, September 2002
In 1970, artist Robert Smithson built a massive sculpture as a piece of land art, or an “earthwork,” that is normally found just below the surface of the water of Great Salt Lake at Rozel Point. In drought conditions, the art piece, titled Spiral Jetty, becomes visible, often with salt encrustations that decorate the basalt spiral formation. Great Salt Lake, in addition to being salty, is also home to microorganisms that live or even thrive in extremely salty conditions and produce pigments that give them a red to orange color, which becomes visible in the water at times. Chau Tu reports for this week’s Science Friday written piece:
Great Salt Lake is known as a terminal basin, meaning its water has no outlet. “Water escapes through evaporation, and everything else stays there,” says Jaimi Butler, coordinator of the Great Salt Lake Institute. At the time the sculpture was built, the water level of the lake was particularly low. But by 1972, the water rose again to near-average levels, submerging the artwork.
“Smithson anticipated that the lake would rise and fall, the residue of salt crystals causing the black rocks to glisten white whenever the water level dropped,” the New York Times Magazine wrote in 2002. And indeed, that very year, regional droughts caused the jetty to reappear “for the first prolonged period in its history,” according to the Dia Foundation, which now owns the sculpture. (The Great Salt Lake Institute partners with the Dia Foundation and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to oversee the Spiral Jetty.)
Organikos 