Stephen Kobasa Photo
Nancy Holt, End of the Line/West Rock, 1985
stone, masonry, steel
Southern Connecticut State University campus
Farnam Avenue, near Brownell Hall
Is there any more dismally contrived local landscape than the campus of Southern Connecticut State University? Its scattering of hermit trees appear incapable of rising beyond the height of a shrub, and its architecture, when not simply nondescript, manages only the witless grandeur of the recently constructed library addition and student center. The place is a dystopia before its time.
But there is one piece of blessed ground. In an arc punning on West Rock, Nancy Holt re-centers the horizon, framing the sight line of the piece with a transcendent stone wall. As in all her work, Holt is intent on reminding us of the natural world lying in wait at the edges of our impositions and indifference.
There is one other evocative fabrication nearby: the Founders’ Gate from the New Haven State Teachers’ College originally located on Howe Street. There is something sorrowful in its survival out of context, but my mother would have walked under it on her way to class when she was young, and that makes it a private blessing.
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Beautiful!