By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
A new art installation created for the grounds of the Overton Community Center is largely complete. Las Vegas artist Mark Brandvik has spent the last couple of weeks on site completing the final assembly of the sculpture.
Called “Earth Rise,” the sculpture portrays a “dynamite blast” of rock which also doubles as a dynamic rocket exhaust plume. At the top of the 17-foot-tall sculpture appears a representation of a Saturn 5 rocket blasting off.
Brandvik’s work was the finalist selected for the space in a project called “Gateway to Double Negative.” It is the result of $231,000 in public funding that was set aside by the Clark County Commissioners in 2016 for a public artwork at the location.
The project called for artists to create an piece that would interpret and point toward the famous “Double Negative” earth artwork completed in 1969 by Michael Heizer.
Heizer’s work is located in a remote spot on the east edge of the Mormon Mesa and is accessed by passing through the Moapa Valley.
Brandvik and an assistant spent the first week assembling the “rocks” at the base of the sculpture. These elements were fabricated out of both stainless and Corten steel.
The artist worked mainly in the early morning hours. “The worst enemy right now is the heat,” he said. “So we are just getting an early start before things warm up. Then we usually have to cut out at about 10 am every day.”
There was some delay in the assembly when the necessary lift equipment was not available for rent to complete the upper part of the project. But last week Brandvik secured that equipment and by Wednesday evening, July 26, he had installed the tower and had topped it with the four-foot-high, 3-D printed steel rocket. Only a few finishing touches are left to install which is expected to be done in the coming days, he said.
Brandvik explained that the elements of his artwork were made to reflect some aspects of Double Negative.
The blasted rock in EarthRise are to evoke the blasting done in the early excavation of the famous artwork.
The Saturn 5 rocket reflects the launch of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon which took place the same year as the Double Negative was built.
“The more I looked at it, those two events took on some historical symmetry to me,” Brandvik said. “Heizer’s take on his 1969 earth work was to use Earth as the most important media for art. And the Apollo moon missions were really as much about Earth as they were about the moon.”
In seeing this connection, Brandvik said that he pictured the famous photograph brought back from the Apollo missions, of the Earth rising over the face of the Moon. “It was the first time that humanity saw the Earth as this fragile thing out there in space,” he said. “In a lot of ways the two projects were not dissimilar and they also happened to occur at roughly the same time in history.”
To also reflect the significance of the Moapa Valley community, and the surrounding environment, to Heizer’s artwork, Brandvik incorporated petroglyph-like etchings into the Corten steel elements near the base of the piece.
“I found images that referenced the valley and its history,” he said.
These images included architectural features like church buildings, and agricultural structures, brand symbols from the Moapa Ranch, the endangered Moapa dace and other wildlife, landscape elements and more.
As part of the project, Brandvik gave an instructional presentation to local art students at Moapa Valley High School in 2020, where he received input on some of these elements.
The work also includes two large interpretive signs, also made of stainless steel, installed on the premises. These give some additional information about both Brandvik’s artwork and the “Double Negative” piece.
Mickey Sprott, Supervisor of the Clark County Public Arts Department said that she was pleased with how the work had taken shape.
“I am happy to see it coming to completion,” Sprott said. “And I think it will be a great addition to the community here. It certainly grabs the attention and the imagination. And it points people toward “Double Negative” which has a lot of international interest.”
Sprott added that a dedication ceremony for the new art piece is being planned by the county in the coming weeks.
“We want to celebrate this with the community,” she said. “But I think we will wait until at least September, when things cool off a bit.”
