Commissioned through the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Art-in-Architecture program, Annual Ring is a site-responsive sculpture that uses solar alignment to register cyclical changes in time and light. Constructed from steel and organized around a hemispherical form, the work combines a raised ring with a dome punctuated by apertures that frame the sky and direct sunlight into the sculpture’s interior. As with all of Holt’s public sculptures, the work was fabricated locally.

Throughout her five decades of artmaking, drawing was fundamental to Nancy Holt’s creative thinking. She would test ideas on the page, developing technical details as she shaped her ideas. These drawings are for the sculpture Wild Spot (1979–80), located on the campus of Wellesley College. In the first drawing illustrated above, Holt shows the exact site.