GARDEN VALLEY — Concrete borders separate carefully manicured hills of river pebbles from the brown-gray stones marking the path, their long, parallel trajectory leading the eye down a seemingly endless, ceilingless hallway. There are no landmarks. There are no maps.
There aren’t even footsteps of those who walked here before from which to draw direction. All around, the sea of stones form shapes the brain constantly tries to interpret – an empty lake bed? An amphitheater? A maze? Only the crunch-crunch-crunch of rocks underfoot and the occasional jet speeding overhead reminds you that this is not a dream. This is City.
Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Los Angeles riots, 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic are just a few of the world events that occurred while artist Michael Heizer plodded away building this colossal art piece in a remote Lincoln County valley. Spending 50 years on just one art project is a mind-bending undertaking, but it’s just one of many details that makes describing — and interpreting — City such a a Sisyphean task. Its sheer size — a mile and half long and half a mile wide — makes it impossible for a viewer to step back and take it all in.
Even the work itself, a mix of hills and smooth depressions made from neatly kept riverbed stones and art sculptures made of sharp concrete forms, changes before the visitor’s eyes. Like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the sun alters the shapes around the viewer in real time. Every movement or .
