The Spiral Jetty, Utah

The Spiral Jetty actually a monumental earthwork was created by artist Robert Smithson in April 1970. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a color film named “Spiral Jetty”. It is located off Rozel Point in the north arm of Great Salt Lake Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, black basalt rocks, and water.

Spiral Jetty is 460 meters long, 4.6 meters wide coil that stretches over 1500 feet into the lake. Although, you may consider as symbolize large-scale earthwork of land art. Unquestionably the spiral Jetty is an exceptional art historical reputation and its exclusive exquisiteness has drawn visitors and media attention from throughout Utah and around the world. In normal precipitation, the water level stays a level, but varies with precipitation in the mountains surrounding the area, exposing the jetty in times of drought and submerging.

Therefore, a spiral jetty is sometimes visible and sometimes submerged depending on the water level. Moreover, due to consistent ruddy water and salt encrustation, the black basalt rock emerges into large white rock. Moreover, during the construction of the jetty, Robert Smithson & his wife wrote and directed a 32-minute color film, Spiral Jetty and funded by Virginia Dwan and Douglas Christmas.

In the movie, Smithson recorded his voice displaying natural history museum, prehistoric relics, construction process, earth history, and his interest in geology, astronomy, paleontology, mythology, and cinema. Robert Smithson selected the Rozel Point site, due to the red blood color water and connection with the primordial sea and stark anti-pastoral beauty, and industrial leftovers from adjacent Golden Spike National Historic Site, as well as an old pier and a few unused oil rigs.

The thriving Salt-tolerant bacteria and algae make the red hue water, although isolated from fresh water. The construction company moves the rock into the lake by a large tractor and a front-end loader to haul the 6,650 tons of rock and earth into the lake. However, Smithson initially faces difficulties to motivate the contractor to accept this strange proposal along with land rights and earthmoving equipment.

The construction took six days when the lake water was unusually low due to drought. So when the water level comes back makes the spiral jetty invisible. In 2002, the area experienced another drought revealing the spiral jetty a second time. This time spiral jetty remained visible for almost a year due to the lowering of the water level. A similar scenario happened in the year 2005, 2010, and 2011. As of 2015, the spiral jetty is above water and completely visible.

However, Smithson died in a plane crash in Texas three years after finishing the spiral jetty which has led to a controversy over the preservation of the sculpture. Utah State has owned the sculpture since 2011 due to exposure and a growing number of visitors. Though, it is expected that jetty will again disappear once the drought is over.

So, spiral jetty surfaced many times between 1970 and 2015 due to lake-level fluctuations and survived robust wave erosion; the hard salt crust may be cemented the boulders together and provided a protective layer on the jetty surface. Source: Wikipedia