Dan Linz' Monolith

Continuing on the trail through the eastern portion of Pritchard Park, you cross between the posts of an old barbed wire fence pinned to the edge of the bluff overlooking the EPA site. Just past the jog in the path, Dan Linz' piece is tucked on this crest, its imposing weight suspended improbably from a tree. It is a huge and dominating piece, and it is easily subsumed into its surroundings. If you aren't looking, you will miss it.

Dan's work embodies the buzz of contradictions within this place that I wanted to unveil through this show. His piece could hang anywhere, and yet it is quintessentially about and from this site. It is framed in a rectangular box, and because of that it is incongruous here, in this mass of undergrowth. But it is seamless as well: the box repeats the straight lines of the fenceposts and creosoted poles that dot the landscape, and the box form holds a collection of specimens from the site. Wound on the left side is a length of barbed wire cut from the adjacent fence, tacked to the base is corrugated iron roofing from a fallen shed, and collected across the face are other artifacts: a deer skull, gravel shiny black with the reference to creosote, an abandoned gasoline can and an old toy loader are some.

His gift is distilling the sense of discovery one encounters in this environment at the site. Darkness and beauty and mystery and sickness and hope intermingle here. He collects and displays with interest and lack of judgment, he witnesses and speaks through his work.

He writes, "For me art is like being lost without a sense of destination. Never quite sure whether I’ve gone too far, or not quite far enough. Fumbling in the dark for that map, that feeling of found. Its less about where you’re going and more about realizing that moment where you’re at.

It is my intention to create a piece that encapsulates not the similarities but the small disparities that make the site at Pritchard Park almost human. The history gone and grown over that continues to affect both the landscape of the future and the future of the landscape."