A successful artwork should command unity between concept and material. Aiming to create an artwork in which the choice of material was key to the concept of the final piece, I began this project by selecting copper wire as my material. I experimented with it until the concept of creating a landscape model of Kennecott Copper Mine, UT, the largest open human excavation, emerged. Because the idea originated from the material, the two were naturally married.
A fixed project budget of $30.00 stood at the core of this artwork. It inversely related the size of the mine to the size of the model. As the copper mine relinquished more metal and increased in size, the amount of copper in the earth depleted. As a result, the price of copper rose, the amount of copper available for the budget decreased, and each new iteration of the model consequently reduced in size. In this way, this sculpture bridged the gap between model and site by linking them with mutual dependence; one could not change without altering the other.
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