Lahontan Group III: Vahishing Ship (Greenhouse for Lake Lahontan)


Left: installed: UC Berkeley Art Museum, MATRIX Gallery, 1987
Right: installed: Smithsonian Institution, Wash, DC, 1989.

12 ft. (3.66m) high, steel, glass, misting system, water and sediment from Pyramid Lake, Nevada,

Commissioned by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum MATRIX program (MATRIX No. 110), this work is the third piece built in response to the ice age Lake Lahontan as part of the Lahontan Group. It is an elegy for the disappearance of that lake and ending of the ice ages. Lake Lahontan once covered over 8000 sq. mi of northern Nevada of which the contemporary Pyramid Lake, north of Reno, NV is one of the last living remnants. The hull structure is permanently installed at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Woodside, CA, as Vanishing Ship (Third State).

Lahontan Group I-III

Artfourm review by Bill Berkson of the first installation