This week the exhibition Nancy Holt: Between Heaven and Earth launches at the Western Gallery at Western Washington University, the location of Nancy Holt’s Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings (1977-78).

Between Heaven and Earth follows the development of Holt’s ideas that led her to create Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings. This trans-disciplinary exhibition addresses both the complexities of Holt’s artwork and her interests in geology, biology, ecology, surveying technology and astronomy.

The selection of artworks incorporates several important formational works for Holt, which are on loan from Holt/Smithson Foundation’s collection. Alongside drawings of Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings are a selection of early concrete poems, the photographic series Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, the composite photowork Old Sarum Ruins illustrated above, and examples of her Locators from 1972.  The Locators play an important role: these early lens-less sighting devices set the visual syntax that informs Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings and demonstrate her career-long interest in visual perception and the interconnectedness between directional awareness and how we locate ourselves within a physical place.

Nancy Holt, Between Heaven and Earth is curated by Professor Barbara Miller, who contributed to the Foundation’s Scholarly Text series with an essay on Stone Enclosure: Rock Rings, and is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. The exhibition is open January 14 - May 7, 2022.