today on earth day i’m thinking about the spiral jetty 🌀i saw it for the first time last year and i haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
robert smithson built it in 1970 from 6,650 tons of black basalt rock on the northeastern shore of the great salt lake. he was obsessed with entropy—the idea that form is always in the process of becoming something else. that loss is not the opposite of creation. it’s part of it.
two years after he finished it, the jetty disappeared. submerged under rising water for almost thirty years. smithson died in 1973 and never saw it reemerge.
what he couldn’t have anticipated was that the great salt lake, amid record drought, would shrink by two-thirds.
the jetty has been bone dry since 2002. the head of the holt/smithson foundation put it plainly: it’s now very unlikely the waters will ever reach spiral jetty again.
smithson built a piece about entropy and got more entropy than he bargained for. the climate completed his argument for him in a way he never could have imagined and definitely never wanted.
i’ve been thinking about this alongside erasure poetry, the practice of removing text to make new meaning, where the ghost of the original is always still there. the spiral jetty feels like that to me. a form shaped by what’s been lost. by what the water used to be. the absence is part of the work now.
land art matters because it can’t be moved indoors when things get hard. it has to stay and witness. it changes with the place it’s in. it becomes a record of what happened to the land itself.
the spiral jetty is 55 years old and it has never been more visible or more heartbreaking
Stillness Study is back! Ahhh, I’m so jazzed to host this retreat again. My love for Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keeffe runs as wide as the Taos sky and I can’t wait to explore solitude as devotion through the artwork and history of these inspiring artists. Limited seats! (7 + me) Comment if you want me to DM you a link to this brochure 🤎🩷
riso postcards printed at @outletpdx ~ want me to mail you one? 💌
2025 started with this reading (thank u CA) and ended with a bestfriends trip to Claire’s* (*NYU, thank u Dr. Hazen) ~ with quitting my job, indulging land art, and hosting retreats tucked sweetly in between. entering my rest era 🥕✨🙏 grateful
Some moments from the Stillness Study retreat that happened last month ✨ now a signature @skypunch_retreats offering. I recently came across a screenshot of a text convo from January where I was wondering if I’d even be doing this retreat this year… and looking at these photos (and the retreat group chat that’s still buzzing) feels like a real pinch-me moment.
I’m dreaming up spring and fall 2026 sessions. Wanna come? 🌝
Stillness Study isn’t “go be alone and quiet in the desert.” It’s a guided inquiry into solitude through art history, landscape, shared conversation, and carefully designed programming. We looked at how Georgia O’Keeffe shaped a life devoted around space; how Agnes Martin approached observation; how place can shift our inner tempo.
Swipe through for the in-between moments that made the weekend what it was.
Spring and fall 2026 dates dropping soon ~ DM me with your email to be added to to list for early access 💌
These stunning photos were captured by @calsvisions 🌀🩷☁️
hi i’m erica and i wrote about door mats and mugs (and reintroductions) on my UNHhhhhhhsubstack 🔗 in bio 🙂↕️ plz share your mugs and door mats in da chat ⬇️
Inside Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home where she painted, cooked, and watched the light change over the New Mexico desert 🖼️ She also collected over 1200 rocks 🤯🪨 Visiting her home feels like stepping into an artist’s retreat: devotion in simplicity, space, and silence 😌
