Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock [detail], 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock [detail], 1984-85
Brown fieldstone, steel painted black, concrete, boulders
Overall dimensions: height 14 ft (4.3 m), width (including boulder path) 600 ft (182.9 m), length 32 ft (9.8 m); outer ring: diameter 8 ft (2.4 m), width 2 ft (0.6 m), thickness 1 1/2 ft (0.5 m); inner ring: diameter 6 ft (1.8 m); ground-level ring: diameter 8 ft 6 in (2.6 m); path length: 355 ft (108.2 m)
Southern Connecticut State University campus; Farnham Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Administered by Connecticut Commission on the Arts Percent for Art Program and Southern Connecticut State University
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
End of the Line/West Rock is located on the campus of Southern Connecticut State University. In this site-specific sculpture, Nancy Holt directs vision and focuses attention on West Rock, a tree-covered volcanic ridge that rises sharply above the surrounding forest and lake. From its summit, expansive views stretch across New Haven to Long Island Sound. In 1985, as the university campus expanded, Holt sought to “salvage the only whole view of West Rock still available on site.”
The sculpture comprises two concentric metal rings set within a curved wall of brown fieldstone that echoes the shape of West Rock. Like the earlier sculpture Time Span, the concentric rings can be moved by hand. Holt wrote in her notes on the sculpture that the “rings in the masonry also can be seen to be an extension of the eye itself.” Directly in front of the sculpture is a metal ring set into the ground. Standing at its center frames a view of West Rock. Extending from the sculpture, a serpentine path of fifty-one boulders sourced from land near the university leads to a viewing area from which the sculpture can be seen.
I wanted to focus attention on this historic outcropping of New Haven.” The sculpture “evolves from the site itself. It’s a response to the place, the topography and the materials available in the locale. It’s very much a work that engages the place. […] Spend a little time there. Look at it from various positions and you will make many associations.
Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt quoted in Patricia G. Barnes, 'SCSU boasts art pioneer’s sculpture' in the New Haven Journal Courier. September 16, 1985
Overlooking Lake Austin on The Contemporary Austin's Laguna Gloria campus, Time Span is anchored in earth, water, and sky. On April 5th, the artist’s birthday, the shadows encircle a plaque on the ground that details the work’s completion—which also occurred on April 5th, 1981.
In developing her outdoor sculpture End of the Line/West Rock, Nancy Holt produced detailed drawings to communicate its form and relationship to the site. These two drawings relate to the site-specific sculpture located on the campus of Southern Connecticut State University. The first outlines the sculpture’s construction and the views it frames. The second, drawn by Holt, details the long line of locally sourced boulders that situates the sculpture within the landscape.
