Portable Orchard, Newton Harrison and Helen Mayer Harrison, 1972-73

…the trail-blazing artist couple now based in Santa Cruz whose work I have been aware of since college days – their early work taking the form of radical  dirt, farm, and orchard making projects, were inspiring and charming dinner companions tonight at Montalvo (the artist residency where Lorenzo from NERO has joined me for a few weeks to finish our book) recounting fascinating stories of the 1950’s in Florence; the early 1960’s New York Art scene (they were also at the 1974 Beuys’ ‘I love America and America Loves Me‘ performance); Yale days with Nancy Graves, Bob Mangold, Richard Serra, Jennifer Bartlett; and eventually UCSD where they helped establish the art school with a tight knit community of other artists like the Eleanor and David Antin and Allan Kaprow – though now they are preoccupied with super ambitious long term projects dealing with global warming called The Force Majeure, whose effects will outlive them way into the future…and the evening left me with a renewed sense of how long art – and it’s story are – and how short the day to day ups and downs of everything else is…and how helpful it is to stick your head up from the smallness of the moment every once in a while in to the bigger chain of time, backward and forward. (the Harrisons website)