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| Starr Earthwork 2002 | Global Positioning Systems (GPS) |
News Coverage of Starr Earthwork
CROP CIRCLES ARE SIGNS FOR WORLD PEACE
By Lynn Turner
Kalamazoo Gazette
Five giant acre-size stars made of growing corn dot the landscape of Interstate 94 at the 26-mile exit in Albion. Orbiting moons made of rye grass are soon to join the design.
It has nothing to do with aliens.
It has everything to do with world peace.
While the final effect is to be somewhat like crop-circle designs made familiar to millions in Mel Gibson's latest movie, "Signs," the design in local, not extraterrestrial.
Louis Rizzolo, a professor of art at Western Michigan University, designed the landscape art on 37 acres of land donated by Starr Commonwealth, a private child-and-family-services organization based in Albion. Th art, Starr Earth-work 2002, will be the centerpiece of a gathering for World Peace Art Initiatives that runs Sept. 29 through Oct. 6.
"The theme is the oneness of humankind regardless of ethnicity, belief or color," Rizzolo said.
The final design is of three concentric circles. The center circle, 300 feet wide, will have a logo of three interlocking images to represent the oneness of humankind. Five large stars represent the five founding countries involved in the peace initiative: United States, China, Norway, Italy and Tasmania/ Australia. Four smaller stars and a six-sided star represent five countries hoping to join soon: Palestine, Austria, the Netherlands, France and Israel. A ring of 15 moons make up the outer circle, which is 1,000 feet across to represent 15 school districts expected to take part in the peace ceremony with banners that will be displayed in each circle.
The underlying message is to show how art, technology and science, working together, can create and maintain world peace and harmony, Rizzolo said.
Science and technology played a big role in getting Rizzolo's design from concept into emerging reality. He enlisted the help of two WMU assistant professors of geography- Dave Lemberg and Rolland Fraser-who used computer graphing and Global Positioning System units to stake out the art design.
In the course of the work, the hard science guys had to tweak the artist's original concept.
"We had to go more from a free-flowing design with over-lapping elements to one more geometric," Lemberg said. "It wasn't going to work if you're cutting stuff out. The layers wouldn't be visible."
While the two disciplines of art and geography appear to be far apart, they really are not, Lemberg said.
"This is not the norm," he said of the project, "but geographers study patterns on landscapes like shoreline development or…changing boundaries of schools. Large-scale art was not anything I thought of doing, but it works."
"It's definitely patterns on landscapes."
With the design in hand, Lemberg and Fraser plotted key points from which the stars and circles could be formed. They charted the latitude and longitude of the points and uploaded the data into Lemberg's GPS unit. Then they went out to the site, found each spot and knocked in a color-coded stake so those cutting the field would know what symbol they were shaping.
They made two trips to the site to stake out the symbols, Lemberg said. Each took about a morning's worth of work.
"It doesn't take aliens to do these," Lemberg said with a smile.
News Coverage of Starr Earthwork