Art in the Public Eye the Making of Dark Star Park1988

A record by the artist of the many interrelationships and processes involved in reclaiming a blighted urban area through the construction of functional public sculpture. Interviews with some of the people responsible for bringing DARK STAR PARK into existence – the artist, the administrator, the developer, the landscape architect, the gunite contractor, the foreman, the maintenance man, and lastly the art historian/critic, John Beardsley, are interspersed with shots of the construction – guniting, steel fabrication, masonry work, and landscaping. "Designed by environmental artist Nancy Holt, DARK STAR PARK is both a park and a work of art. Holt's site specific sculptures are an intriguing response to a contemporary urban context. They speak to the growing business district of Rosslyn (in Arlington, VA) that borders Washington, D. C.; the site and its relationship to earth and sky; and one's perception of place. Because it is both park and work of art, the spatial experience of the park is also the sculptural experience of the work... giant concrete spheres perch precariously on the earth. They cast shadows like planetary bodies and eclipse each other as you drive or walk by... At one end of the site, an irregular mound of earth embedded with concrete pipes looks an ancient landform encroached upon by modern civilization. Holt's vision did not stop at the site's boundaries. During the planning process she successfully integrated the park with the adjacent office building and extended it onto a nearby traffic island." – Terry Ryan LeVeque, Landscape Architecture, July/August 1985