Nancy Holt, Wild Spot
1979–80
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Steel, native wildflowers
Outer ring: height 6–10 ft (1.8–3 m), diameter 10 ft (3 m); inner ring: height 8 ft (2.4 m), diameter 5 ft (1.5 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Wild Spot
1979–80
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Steel, native wildflowers
Outer ring: height 6–10 ft (1.8–3 m), diameter 10 ft (3 m); inner ring: height 8 ft (2.4 m), diameter 5 ft (1.5 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Wild Spot
1979–80
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Steel, native wildflowers
Outer ring: height 6–10 ft (1.8–3 m), diameter 10 ft (3 m); inner ring: height 8 ft (2.4 m), diameter 5 ft (1.5 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Nancy Holt, Wild Spot
1979–80
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Steel, native wildflowers
Outer ring: height 6–10 ft (1.8–3 m), diameter 10 ft (3 m); inner ring: height 8 ft (2.4 m), diameter 5 ft (1.5 m)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
In 1979 Nancy Holt was invited to develop a sculpture for the campus of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, for an exhibition titled Sitework on show between May and August 1980, curated by Judy Fox. Wild Spot is almost hidden in the landscape in what Holt described as a “natural cove.” It comprises a pair of nested steel-fencing rings. The outer one can be entered, while the inner circle, which cannot be entered, holds native wild flowers. Holt describes in her 1981 text Wild Spot: Notes on a Few Coincidences of Art and Life that the invitation came as a return: she had unsuccessfully applied as a teenager to study at Wellesley College.
Returning to a particular place associated with certain memories can trigger these feelings: the external trigger activates the internal trigger. At Wellesley, I let the storm of my emotions blow through, let the stabbing happen, while being present to it—feeling how it was affecting my body, and noting what thoughts were associated with it. “Wild Spot” also refers to that wild, uneducable, untamed zone in the center of ourselves.
Nancy Holt interviewed by Laura McLean-Ferris
Art Review, July 21, 2014
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.
Missoula Ranch Locators - Vision Encompassed (1972) by Nancy Holt is a site-responsive sculpture created on ranchland near Missoula, Montana. Eight Locators, T-shaped structures made from galvanized steel, were arranged in a circular formation and aligned with the compass directions outdoors, developing from experiments Holt conducted in her studio the previous year.
