Opus 40
A few months ago I went to Opus 40, a large environmental sculpture near Woodstock, NY. It was created by sculptor, quarryman, and former college professor, Harvey Fite. After working on it for 37 years he died on May 9, 1976 in an accidental fall while working on the ongoing project.
According to Wikipedia:
“Opus 40 is a large environmental sculpture in Saugerties, New York, created by sculptor and quarryman Harvey Fite (1903—1976). It comprises a sprawling series of dry-stone ramps, pedestals and platforms covering 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of a bluestone quarry. Fite, then a professor of sculpture and theater at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, purchased the disused quarry site in 1938, expecting to use it as a source of raw stone for his representational sculpture. Instead, inspired by a season of work restoring Mayan ruins in Honduras, he began creating a space to display the large carved statues he was beginning to create out of native bluestone. Using the rubble that had been left behind as the area was quarried, he built terraces, ramps and walkways to lead to the individual works, doing all the work by hand, and using the traditional hand tools that had been used by the local quarrymen before him. As the rampwork of his open-air gallery expanded, Fite realized that the 1.5-ton (1.36 metric ton) statue, Flame, which had occupied the central pedestal, had become too small for the scale to which his work had grown, and he replaced it with a 9.5-ton bluestone pillar he had found in a nearby streambed, intent on carving it in place as his tallest bluestone sculpture to date. Fite erected the focal monolith in 1962, 23 years after he had begun work on his quarry gallery.
Though Fite’s original plan was to carve the monumental river-stone in place, as his tallest bluestone sculpture to date (he had sculpted Flame in his indoor studio), once the stone was up, he realized that what he had originally conceived as a setting for sculpture had become a coherent sculpture in its own right, and a new kind of sculpture, in which carved representational work was out of place. Fite removed his other sculptures and relocated them on the surrounding grounds, and continued to work on this new sculptural concept for the remainder of his life.
Fite died on May 9, 1976, in the 37th year of his creation, in an accidental fall while working on the ongoing project. Work stopped that day, leaving some areas unfinished”.
For an interesting timeline of Fite’s work see Opus 40 History (from Quarrying to Present)
The site is not all that large (about 0.057 km²), and I think we may have missed part of it. It’s dominated by the monolith sculpture, called “Flame”. As you wander around you see it from a variety of different perspectives. Below: views of the central structure.
A closer look at some of the pools and meandering walls.
It’s not all unrelieved bare rocks though. Scattered around the sculpture are small clumps of trees. I suspect that they were not planted by Fite, but rather he built the sculptures around them.
I was standing high up by the monolith and looked down into the quarry. I noticed this clump of daisies all by itself, surrounded by a mass of bare rock. It was too far away to take a decent picture, so I walked down to get a closer view.
The bug on this flower, was the cherry on the cake.
We had entered the site from the North West. However, as we were leaving and walking back to the car we had a completely different view. We were now looking West and could see the Catskill Mountains looming up behind the monolith. It was really spectacular!
Although the site it one large sculpture, there are none the less, a number of smaller sculptures scattered around the quarry. Here are a couple of them. I believe that there are quite a few more in the surrounding woods.
The Quarryman’s Museum. [In 1972] “Fite builds a garage to house his trucks, including his trusty Jeep and an old fire engine that he bought from Bard College in the early 1950s. The fire engine’s primary use has been to serve as a pumping mechanism to clean out pools in and around the quarry, but it is also quite a popular fixture of the Labor Day parades and other events in High Woods (even helping put out a few fires).
While constructing the garage, he decides to add a second story that will serve as a museum to house his collection of quarrymen’s tools and artifacts, as a way to honor the men who toiled in the quarries before him. This becomes the Quarryman’s Museum. It’s now also a gift shop.” (Opus 40 Website)
Quarrymen’s tools and artifacts. I love old metal objects, the more rusty the better although these weren’t all that rusty.
An old building. I have no idea what this building is. Some kind of storage I imagine. I just liked the way it looked. Looks as if it’s lucky to still be standing.
When we were at Opus 40 there was an interesting installation of works by Dana Matthews along the trails. The installation is called “en plein air” although, interestingly on her website she refers to it as “Garden Goddesses “. There were six of these works along the trail we took, and there may be more scattered around other trails, and in the woods. She describes them as follows:
My objective with this body of work is to recreate long-ago awareness of standing on sacred ground, particularly when experienced outdoors under the expansive sky and cathedral of trees. To achieve this, I have meticulously layered high-resolution scans of flora and fauna with my photographs and spirit drawings. Once formed, I transferred the images onto a sheer poly fabric, chosen for its ability to withstand outdoor elements while reflecting and absorbing the essence of the surroundings.
The resulting six separate and distinct images, printed slightly larger than human scale, hover four feet above the ground, rising to meet the viewer's gaze. They sway with the wind or breathe slowly in stillness, while the shifting sunlight—whether subdued or radiant—projects a continually evolving image of the surrounding forest onto the surface. This collaboration of printed image, material, and natural surroundings, combined with the transparency of the fabric, forms a living conduit. In the Celtic tradition, there are places on earth known as as “thin places” where the veil between this world and the eternal world is very thin. My images hanging in the woods offer a shimmering glimpse of the "thin places", a sensory and contemplative experience, bridging the gap between the tangible and the intangible.
I had chosen to take the pictures of the quarry in black and white because I felt that black and white better suited the stark, gritty feel of the quarry. However, I don’t this this installation would work well in black and white - hence the color
