Land art or Earth art is an art movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. It is also an art form that is created in nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (trees, grass ) and water. The works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions.



1. Forest Guitar, Argentina

link Breaking up the flat agricultural areas of Argentina's Pampas is a guitar formed entirely out of trees. Stretching for 2/3 of a mile (1km), the multi-colored instrument was created by one Argentine farmer to memorialize his wife. Crushed by the loss of his love, a few years later Pedro Martin Ureta (owner) began working on designing a guitar in his field that could be seen from above by airplane. He settled on the design because his late wife loved the instrument and he wanted to memorialize her on his land.

link map] Working tirelessly to plant and cultivate the trees, Ureta created a perfect guitar shape, complete with a star-shaped hole in the middle. Using mostly cypress trees to form the outline, Ureta used blue eucalyptus trees to accent the strings on the neck of the guitar. Easily visible from airplanes, the guitar brings joy to many who fly over the Pampas. [ link



2. The Green Cathedral, Netherlands

link The Green Cathedral or De Groene Kathedraal located near Almere Netherlands, is an artistic planting of Lombardy poplars (Populus nigra italica) that mimics the size and shape of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims, France. The Green Cathedral is 150 m (490 ft) long and 75 m (246 ft) wide, and the mature poplar trees are approximately 30 m (98 ft) tall.

link The work was planted by Marinus Boezem (b. 1934) on April 16, 1987 in Southern Flevoland, Nederland. The land art project was installed on polder land. 178 trees were planted on a knoll, a half-metre above the surrounding area. Over the following years, some trees were replaced due to deer damage, and stone was laid in the floor to echo the cross ribs and support beams of the cathedral.

link map] Now mature, the cathedral has become a location for weddings, funerals and meetings. Nearby, a clearing has been made in a young beech forest so that the open space is in the shape of the same cathedral. Boezem suggests, as the poplars decline, the beech trees around the clearing will grow to create the church once more thus insuring a cyclical evolution of growth, decline and growth. [ link



3. Spiral Jetty, USA

link Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April, 1970 that is considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson.

link Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks and water, Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake.

Visitors walk around the submerged Spiral Jetty link map] The water level of the lake varies with precipitation in the mountains surrounding the area, revealing the jetty in times of drought and submerging it during times of normal precipitation. Originally black basalt rock against ruddy water, Spiral Jetty is now largely white against pink due to salt encrustation. [ link





4. Heart-Shaped Meadow, UK