When you talk about creating large pieces of artwork, Michael Heizer needs to be at the top of your list. He’s built huge pieces of artwork before, such as Double Negative (which involved digging deep trenches near a canyon) and Effigy Tumuli (which was five earthwork-based sculptures in Illinois). His latest creation, City, is still closed to the public but is slowly being revealed by Google Earth.
A recent post by Alex Turnbull at Google Sightseeing digs deeply into Heizer’s work, with City as the main focus of the post. From Alex:
The various [City] complexes, built on remote property owned by Heizer in Nevada, measure 2km long and 400m wide (1¼ x ¼ miles), with some structures reaching 25m (80′) in height. Several foundations for the arts support Heizer’s work on City, with total construction cost estimated to exceed $25 million by the time it is completed.
It’s fascinating to learn more about the work he’s done over the years, and Alex does a nice job of using Google Earth to highlight many of his pieces. You can grab his KML file
to explore them for yourself in Google Earth, and I encourage you to read his full article to learn more.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.