At Home on the Range with Patrick Zentz

Sculpture March 2003 Vol. 22 No. 2 (p. 20-21)

By Byron Clercx

Byron Clercx: You have described riding a tractor as an interface between man and earth, an activity that cultivates both landscape and mindscape. Could you explain?

Patrick Zentz: First, I do not have a romantic view of agriculture. Although it is a satisfying way to live, it involves much tedium. Riding a tractor while tilling, planting, or haying involves driving for countless hours on endlessly long days. When I left home for college, I did not intend ever to be involved with agriculture again. However, after I was away for several years, I began to see value in things I had taken for granted. Simple things such as wide-open space, the smell of dirt, the movement of an animal, the sound of wind on grass, or the feel of a well used tool. I also started to miss the state of reverie that can happen during repetitive tasks. In this way, a tractor is an interface between whoever is driving it and the earth. It is a vehicle through which you feel the surface. It yields a haptic sense of the topography. When this type of knowledge of a specific landscape is inculcated with the climatological, geological, and biological information gained experimentally, a spectacular palate is available with which to convert landscape into mindscape.

BC: As an underground at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, you initially majored in biology. Was this a personal passion or simply a legitimate degree for a rancher’s son?

PZ: Pure curiosity. When I was a kid, I always had jars full of bugs scattered around my room. My mother was very tolerant. As long as things didn’t escape from my room, I could keep them. However, after my third year of college, I realized I was not so much interested in studying life forms per se as much as I was interested in studying the interactions between them. Ultimately, I discovered that I am interested in the interactions of systems. Because science seemed a bit programmatic, I began looking alternatives.

BC: When you emerged from graduate school in 1974 (MFA-Sculpture, University of Montana), the Foxfire books advocated “living off the grid,” and a flurry of non-traditional art movements percolated into academia. How did this influence your thinking?

PZ: I was interested in the contexts that Minimalism, Conceptualism, Earth, and Performance art presented relative to the existing debate that abstractionism had established with representational art. My work has been greatly influenced by the conceptual rigor introduced by these new art forms. I saw a way of creating objects that function in the natural world as vehicles for observation. The information with which I am working is very much involved with language as a system o knowing. The instruments (sculptures) that function as “translators” of environmental phenomena are a result of this inquiry.

BC: What effect does the self-imposed isolation of living and working in Montana have on your career and concepts?

PZ: After college, I returned to Montana because I needed space. At the risk of sounding “new age,” I needed a more basic attachment to earth. Montana is like a Petri-dish you can experiment here. The West is generally conductive to taking risks and asking questions. You can make mistakes and nobody cares. Rural anonymity allows you to develop concepts to a point where they are relevant to a broader public, without intrusion.

BC: Installed in Duck Creek in Yellowstone Country, Montana, as part of your “instrument series,” Creek Translator (1985) converts water and air movement into sound via plucking devices affixed to taut steel cables. What were you looking (listening) for and what did you find?

PZ: The instruments are systems with the potential for action that extrapolates into a conceptual realm. I used this format because “instrument” is a common term, and we have a cultural comprehension about what it means. Essentially, these instruments turned the binoculars around, allowing me, and ultimately others, to see a piece of the world in a new way. My instruments are “mechanico-linguistic” in that you can look at the piece and follow the pulleys, gears, and levers to determine the action creted and imagine the sounds that would subsequently result. Creek Translator reads a natural score provided by the flow of a creek. That score is played by the wind. The sound from this instrument was combined with those of two others: a drum that translated temperature change and a flute system that used horizon line as a score. The three pieces translated the events of a 24-hour day into sound. Since this work, I have continued to build systems that translate information indigenous to specific sites into other formats, such as sound and light patterns. This same concept is also used in larger scale permanent public works.

BC: In Pool, your commissioned installation at the Yellowstone Art Museum, the meditative (auditory and visual) rhythm of droplets hitting the surface is disarming. How do the mechanics work?

PZ: Pool is a system that translates wind into ripple patterns in a 10-footdiameter pool of water. The ripples indicate wind direction and intensity. Waves generated in a six-inch-wide trough surrounding that pool indicate the relative turbulence of air action. Eight copper tubes suspend over the pool at its center receive drips of water relative to the outside temperature. The warmer it is, the more active the percussive cadence. Formally, Pool is designed, as are al the public works, to niche into its site. The achieve the dynamics of the translation, sensors on the outside transmit information to a programmed chip that determines the function of sculptural systems inside. The system essentially treats the walls of the buildings as though they are semi-permeable to the environment. Climatological information is brought to the interior, but in translated form (ripples, waves, and percussive beats).

BC: As your work moves from personal to public, you have gradually reduced the presence of your hand. How did you make the transition from quixotic studio artist to client-driven public artist?

PZ: Although I really enjoy working with public committees and actually collaborating with them in some respects, my work is not client-driven. I accept commissions if I find the site conductive to my ongoing investigations. I consider the committee to be a part of the site. It represents a philosophy. Working with people in this context broadens my range of possibilities. My studio gets larger.