Happy Labor Day ~ Artists at Work ~ Artpark 1975

Art & Archives ~ Artpark: The Program in Visual Arts

Photos from the slide archive include Jim Roche's installation piece, group photos that include Rockne assisting with the installation of Jim's piece, photos of Rockne working on his laser piece, Green Isis, and a photo from Artpark: The Program in Visual Arts, Sharon Edelman, (Editor), 1976, photographer unknown.

"Unlike the inaugural season, in 1975 the entire 200 acres were, for the first time, fully available for the artists and the public." 

Artpark was an alternative sculpture park in Lewiston, NY, 1974 through 1984. For more on Artpark https://www.buffalo.edu/art-galleries/exhibitions/2010/artpark-1974-1984.html

Green Isis, site-specific laser sculpture, Artpark exhibition, Lewiston, NY.  

2009 Art Spaces Archives Project -oral history transcript - interview with David Katzive, Artpark Visual Arts Director, 1974-1976.  "I liked it if artists did something that really connected to something that was  inherently there. Rockne Krebs said he wanted to have his lasers come from the  power plant. I thought, Oh, wow, great, even though it was on the Canadian side. They wouldn’t let him across the border because his lasers were seen as weapons.  We had all kinds of issues there. Finally he got over there. [laughs]", David Katzive.

#artistsatwork #laborday #avantgarde #experimentation #artpark #artandarchives #jimroche #rocknekrebs #davidkatzive #installationart #lasersculpture 

A short film on Jim Roche at ArtPark 1975 - Directed by Tyler Turkle - on YouTube https://youtu.be/jPK-DMkqE_g?si=kyXG9MMf3UoLN6eY

Artpark: The Program in Visual Arts, Sharon Edelman (Editor), 1976 (Book text)

Rockne Krebs, Green Isis. Green laser configurations radiating from a single eight-watt unit located in Canada on the Ontario hydro electric plant.

“It was green and green means a lot in an Egyptian oasis at noon, but “Green Isis” happened at night. Happily, I like green with night when all that remains of the sun is the wind. Such a tiny, important object the sun! The sun’s object size seems no larger than the end of my wooden pencil held at arm’s length in my landscape of big objects but at night light becomes an object, and the trees are black mostly because black and green would be mean together. So I made “Green Isis” mostly black and green which is no doubt why the Queenston Customs officials refused to, refused to, refused to, and refused to see beyond the laser, hear the white street lamps marching across the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, feel the black amorphous hills touch an ancient space accumulated and still dominated by a working river, see how ingenuously two green lines could be drawn diagonally across national boundaries to say nothing of the firmament, and know these as one thing. “Green Isis” was a collage with two green legs spread at one point 5 degrees apart that accumulated one mile of space before they curved over a single hill in Artpark where I stood innocently between attempting to photograph the spatial curve created by my retina and the two beams. There’s still nothing quite like real space, and it is the way the space accumulates that is important to me, not the amount. “Green Isis” was a single vista piece. The first half-mile that the beams traveled toward me only covered one square inch (at my arm’s length) of my total vista, but the second half-mile remains essential to the piece because the two green lines resourcefully come to a point at a natural cash register.  – R.K.”

Instagram reel https://tinyurl.com/4ee26j6d