Land Art Construction - Star Axis & Charles Ross Studio
As a studio assistant and independent contractor for sculptor and earthwork artist Charles Ross, I moved between studio fabrication and the remote mesa land art site of Star Axis in New Mexico. Working in a place where land, light, and long astronomical time are held in architectural form. My time on site supported the ongoing construction of the earthwork while also extended into studio-based fabrication tasks. I worked on projects such as creating & operating his Solar Burn works, as well as managing the infrastructure of video editing & documentation that traced the earthworks construction as it unfolded over the years.
https://charlesrossstudio.com | https://www.staraxis.org
“The approach to building Star Axis involves gathering a variety of star alignments in different time scales and building them into sculptural form. Walking through its chambers you can see how star space relates to human scale and how the space of the stars reaches down into the earth. Ross conceived of Star Axis in 1971 and began building it in 1976 after a 4-year search through the southwest to find the perfect site—a mesa where one stands at the boundary between earth and sky. He’s now finishing Star Axis with a crew of local stonemasons. It’s made with granite, sandstone, bronze, stainless steel, and earth. When completed, Star Axis will be eleven stories high and a fifth of a mile across”
