GOING TO THE MOUNTAINS ski area project

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity” - John Muir, 1901

“Going to the Mountains” is a land art project that stirs a sense of place while drawing attention to land and its usage. The piece homesteads wilderness: settles people within untouched forest, outside the borders of ski runs and gondola route, suggests that wilderness as well as the culture of sport re-creates soul and body. Suggests that uncultivated spaces provide necessary space.

Erected on the North Peak of Mountain Creek ski resort, in collaboration with Mac Premo, the A-frame structure cut with John Muir’s phrase is clad with real cedar tree bark on one side, creating a wide rectangle of organic material in the middle of the forest—a basic, shelter from, but within, the wild. A monolithic outlook over the entire valley below.

This piece embodies a vision of the possibility of contemporary art to reimagine wild spaces and provoke interest in conservation and ecological education.