To commemorate the year that was, we invited artists, designers, and thinkers across disciplines — from painter Matt Connors and ebook publishers Badlands Unlimited to design firm Experimental Jetset and musician Greg Tate — to share a list of their most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects of 2013.
To many, Chris Larson’s best known for torching a modernist home last summer. In Celebration/Love/Loss (2013), a sculpture and performance work created for the all-night Northern Spark festival, Larson built and then burned to the ground a full-scale replica of a Marcel Breuer–designed house built on a St. Paul bluff in 1962. But before that high-profile project, Larson was well known in the Twin Cities for a range of art projects — many equally large in scale and vision. Part of the Walker’s 1998 exhibition Sculpture on Site, the St. Paul–based artist and musician created a wooden, fort-like structure in the Walker’s Cargill Lounge for a 2011 show, and a pair of mini-golf holes he made with students in his University of Minnesota class were part of last year’s Artist-Designed Mini Golf course. His works of Insecure Architecture were featured in the 2012/2013 McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship Exhibition at MCAD, and his video work, Heavy Rotation, will be included in 2014 Whitney Biennial.
As part of our series reflection on the year 2013, Larson offers this list of “ten top things that kept me. In order of appearance.”
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Cyclone Haruna
In my continued interest in rotating, spinning and revolving, images of Cyclone Haruna in February of 2013 held my attention for some time. This cyclone produced widespread flooding, which produced perfect conditions for a catastrophic locust infestation in Madagascar. Tragic.
Sinkholes
As above, so below. In 2013, an extraordinary video of a sinkhole was caught in action by a park emergency official in Assumption Parish Louisiana.
(Images of the 2010 sinkhole in Guatemala continue to hold my attention and still tops my personal top-10 list for 2011.)
Unrequested
2013, the first year no one asked for a friend request.
Cooking with acorns
Free, easy to gather and a great source of protein. Acorns are bitter; make sure to bake and boil out the tannins before eating. Check for worm holes: avoid these or black acorns. White oak is the best source. I eat acorn pancakes with birch syrup: delicious.
Sumac
This summer at the Poor Farm in Wisconsin, I learned how to make tea and lemonade from sumac. Another free and easy way to eat and drink off the earth. Gather the sumac berries in mid-August, before the heavy rains (rain will wash away the flavor and acid). Berries should be ripe with a sharp lemon flavor and have a deep red color. Harvest the berries, soak them in water for an hour or so, strain the liquid with cheesecloth to get rid of the tiny hair and berries. Serve over ice.
Circle Farming
Also known as Heavy Rotation-Center Pivot Irrigation, circle farming is an irrigation process in which a watering systems rotates around the crops. One rotation usually takes three full days. The central pivot farms in Kansas are captured in some incredible images, thanks to map images on the worldwide web. In September 2013, Japan’s ALOS satellite shot some beautiful photos of crop circles in southeastern Libya.
“Art 665b Unraveling”
Jim Hodges’ 2013 MFA sculpture course at Yale University School of Art. I would go back to school to take this class.
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