GRASS STAINS, Boll Family History Gallery, Anton Art Center, Mt. Clemens, MI. 2012

In 1971, Detroit Institute of the Arts curator Samuel Wagstaff commissioned Michael Heizer to create a work onsite to accompany a series of more traditional gallery work in a show titled Actual Size.. The work Dragged Mass, was a 35 ton mass of granite dragged behind a tractor through the lawn of the DIA. Heizer anticipated that the dragged mass would leave a cleanly cut gouge across the manicured surface of the DIA’s outside grounds. The finished work looked more like a construction project in progress. Heizer deemed the work a success and gifted it to the DIA. The public had much different opinions. The exhibition at the Anton Art Center included images of the work from the DIA’s archive and a series of articles from the local press documenting the project and the public’s dismay. A year and a half later after the exhibit at the Anton Art Center, the contents of the show were shifted into a co-written article by myself and Dr. Mary Elizabeth Anderson for the publication Infinite Mile, a short lived arts journal co-founded by Stephen Dewyer and Jennifer Junkermeier Khan,