Here Are 7 Masterworks of Land Art Hidden Across the United States
Gabriella Angeleti, Artnet
May 2024
Starting in the 1960s, Michelle Stuart created monumental works in the landscape with a consciously ephemeral approach. Her only surviving earth work formed a 100-foot-diameter stone circle out of a sequence of cairns. Stone Alignments/Solstice Cairns referenced ancient megalithic structures that align with the sun on the summer solstice, like Stonehenge and the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming. Stuart proposed the work for an exhibition at the now-defunct Portland Center for the Visual Arts, which conserved it for about a decade. Later surrounded by private development (this work is, officially, no longer accessible to the public), the stones were overgrown and only accessible via a back road and winding trail in 2011, according to one intrepid local arts writer. Stuart “likes the idea that the work is like the standing stones in Britain,” said a spokesperson for Galerie Lelong & Co., allowing for time to “take its natural course.” […]